though there be no defect in their intellectual faculties, to which their little progress can be imputed. The mistake here is, that it is usually supposed that by ▾ reading the author's knowledge is transfused into the reader's understanding; and so it is, but not by bare reading, but by reading and understanding what he writ. Whereby I mean not barely comprehending what is affirmed or denied in each proposition (though that great readers do not always think themselves concerned precisely to do), but to see and follow the train of his reasonings, observe the strength and clearness of their connexion, and examine upon what they bottom. Without this a man may read the discourses of a very rational author, writ in a language and in propositions that he very well understands, and yet acquire not one jot of his knowledge; which consisting only in the perceived, certain, or probable connexion of the ideas made use of in his reasonings, the reader's knowledge is no farther increased than he perceives that; so much as he sees of this connexion, so much he knows of the truth or probability of that author's opinions.

All that he relies on without this perception he takes upon trust, upon the author's credit, without any knowledge of it at all. This makes me not at all wonder to see some men so abound in citations, and build so much upon authorities, it being the sole foundation on which they bottom most of their own tenets; so that in effect they have but a second-hand or implicit knowledge; i.e. are in the right, if such an one from whom they borrowed it were in the right in that opinion which they took from him; which indeed is no knowledge at all. Writers of this or former ages may be good witnesses of matter of fact which they deliver, which we may do well to take upon their authority; but their credit can go no farther than this; it cannot at all affect the truth and falsehood of opinions which have no other sort of trial but reason and proof, which they themselves made use of to make themselves knowing, and so must others too that will partake in their knowledge. (From the Conduct of the Understanding.)

On Hardening Children.

Give me leave therefore to advise you not to fence too carefully against the cold of this our climate: there are those in England who wear the same clothes winter and summer, and that without any inconvenience or more sense of cold than others find. But if the mother will needs have an allowance for frost and snow, for fear of harm; and the father, for fear of censure; be sure let not his winter-clothing be too warm: and amongst other things remember that when nature has so well covered his head with hair, and strengthened it with a year or two's age, that he can run about by day without a cap, it is best that by night a child should also lie without one; there being nothing that more exposes to head-ach, colds, catarrhs, coughs, and several other diseases, than keeping the head warm.

I have said 'he' here, because the principal aim of my discourse is, how a young gentleman should be brought up from his infancy, which in all things will not so perfectly suit the education of daughters; though where the difference of sex requires different treatment, it will be no hard matter to distinguish.

I would also advise his feet to be washed every day in cold water; and to have his shoes so thin that they might leak and let in water whenever he comes near it.

more.

Here I fear I shall have the mistress, and maids too, against me. One will think it too filthy; and the other, perhaps, too much pains to make clean his stockings. But yet truth will have it that his health is much more worth than all such considerations, and ten times as much And he that considers how mischievous and mortal a thing taking wet in the feet is to those who have been bred nicely, will wish he had, with the poor people's children, gone bare-foot; who by that means come to be so reconciled by custom to wet their feet, that they take no more cold or harm by it than if they were wet in their hands. And what is it, I pray, that makes this great difference between the hands and the feet in others, but only custom? I doubt not but if a man from his cradle had been always used to go barefoot, whilst his hands were constantly wrapped up in warm mittins, and covered with handshoes, as the Dutch call gloves; I doubt not, I say, but such a custom would make taking wet in his hands as dangerous to him, as now taking wet in their feet is to a great many others. The way to prevent this is to have his shoes made so as to leak water, and his feet washed constantly every day in cold water. It is recommendable for its cleanliness: but that which I aim at in it is health. And therefore I limit it not precisely to any time of the day. I have known it used every night with very good success, and that all the winter, without the omitting it so much as one night in extreme cold weather: when thick ice covered the water, the child bathed his legs and feet in it, though he was of an age not big enough to rub and wipe them himself, and when he began this custom was puling and very tender. But the great end being to harden those parts by a frequent and familiar use of cold water, and thereby to prevent the mischiefs that usually attend accidental taking wet in the feet in those who are bred otherwise; I think it may be left to the prudence and convenience of the parents to choose either night or morning. The time I deem indifferent, so the thing be effectually done. The health and hardiness procured by it would be a good purchase at a much dearer rate. which if I add the preventing of corns, that to some men would be a very valuable consideration. But begin first in the spring with lukewarm, and so colder and colder every time, till in a few days you come to perfectly cold water, and then continue it so winter and summer.

Το

For

it is to be observed in this as in all other alterations from our ordinary way of living, the changes must be made by gentle and insensible degrees; and so we may bring our bodies to any thing without pain and without danger. (From Thoughts concerning Education.)

On Writing and Speaking English Correctly. There can scarce be a greater defect in a gentleman, than not to express himself well, either in writing or speaking. But yet I think I may ask my reader, Whether he doth not know a great many who live upon their estates, and so with the name should have the qualities of gentlemen, who cannot so much as tell a story as they should, much less speak clearly and persuasively in any business? This I think not to be so much their fault, as the fault of their education; for I must without partiality do my countrymen this right, that where they apply themselves, I see none of their neighbours outgo them. They have been taught rhetoric, but yet never taught how to express themselves handsomely with their tongues, or pens, in the language they

are always to use; as if the names of the figures that embellished the discourses of those who understood the art of speaking were the very art and skill of speaking well. This, as all other things of practice, is to be learned not by a few or a great many rules given, but by exercise and application, according to good rules or rather patterns, till habits are got and a facility of doing it well.

Agreeable hereunto, perhaps it might not be amiss to make children, as soon as they are capable of it, often to tell a story of any thing they know; and to correct at first the most remarkable fault they are guilty of in their way of putting it together. When that fault is cured, then to show them the next, and so on, till one after another, all, at least the gross ones, are mended. When they can tell tales pretty well, then it may be time to make them write them. The fables of sop, the only book almost that I know fit for children, may afford them matter for this exercise of writing English, as well as for reading and translating, to enter them in the Latin tongue. When they are got past the faults of grammar, and can join in a continued coherent discourse the several parts of a story without bald and unhandsome forms of transition (as is usual) often repeated; he that desires to perfect them yet farther in this, which is the first step to speaking well, and needs no invention, may have recourse to Tully; and by putting in practice those rules which that master of eloquence gives in his first book De Inventione, § 20, make them know wherein the skill and graces of an handsome narrative, according to the several subjects and designs of it, lie. Of each of which rules fit examples may be found out, and therein they may be shown how others have practised them. The ancient classic authors afford plenty of such examples, which they should be made not only to translate, but have set before them as patterns for their daily imitation.

When they understand how to write English with due connexion, propriety, and order, and are pretty well masters of a tolerable narrative style, they may be advanced to writing of letters; wherein they should not be put upon any strains of wit or compliment, but taught to express their own plain easy sense, without any incoherence, confusion, or roughness. And when they are perfect in this, they may to raise their thoughts have set before them the example of Voiture's, for the entertainment of their friends at a distance, with letters of compliment, mirth, raillery, or diversion; and Tully's epistles, as the best pattern whether for business or conversation. The writing of letters has so much to do in all the occurrences of human life, that no gentleman can avoid showing himself in this kind of writing: occasions will daily force him to make this use of his pen, which, besides the consequences that in his affairs his well or ill managing of it often draws after it, always lays him open to a severer examination of his breeding, sense, and abilities, than oral discourses; whose transient faults, dying for the most part with the sound that gives them life, and so not subject to a strict review, more easily escape observation and censure.

Had the methods of education been directed to their right end, one would have thought this so necessary a part could not have been neglected, whilst themes and verses in Latin, of no use at all, were so constantly every-where pressed, to the racking of children's inventions beyond their strength, and hindering their cheerful progress in learning the tongues, by unnatural difficulties.

But custom has so ordained it, and who dares disobey? And would it not be very unreasonable to require of a learned country school-master (who has all the tropes and figures in Farnaby's rhetoric at his fingers ends) to teach his scholar to express himself handsomely in English, when it appears to be so little his business or thought, that the boy's mother (despised, it is like, as illiterate, for not having read a system of logic and rhetoric) outdoes him in it?

To write and speak correctly gives a grace, and gains a favourable attention to what one has to say: and since it is English that an English gentleman will have constant use of, that is the language he should chiefly cultivate, and wherein most care should be taken to polish and perfect his style. To speak or write better Latin than English may make a man be talked of; but he would find it more to his purpose to express himself well in his own tongue, that he uses every moment, than to have the vain commendation of others for a very insignificant quality. This I find universally neglected, and no care taken any-where to improve young men in their own language, that they may thoroughly understand and be masters of it. If any one among us have a facility or purity more than ordinary in his mother tongue, it is owing to chance, or his genius, or any thing rather than to his education, or any care of his teacher. To mind what English his pupil speaks or writes is below the dignity of one bred up amongst Greek and Latin, though he have but little of them himself. These are the learned languages, fit only for learned men to meddle with and teach; English is the language of the illiterate vulgar; though yet we see the policy of some of our neighbours hath not thought it beneath the public care to promote and reward the improvement of their own language. Polishing and enriching their tongue is no small business amongst them: it hath colleges and stipends appointed it, and there is raised amongst them a great ambition and emulation of writing correctly and we see what they are come to by it, and how far they have spread one of the worst languages, possibly, in this part of the world, if we look upon it as it was in some few reigns backwards, whatever it be now. The great men amongst the Romans were daily exercising themselves in their own language; and we find yet upon record the names of orators who taught some of their emperors Latin, though it were their mother-tongue.

:

It is plain the Greeks were yet more nice in theirs ; all other speech was barbarous to them but their own, and no foreign language appears to have been studied or valued amongst that learned and acute people; though it be past doubt that they borrowed their learning and philosophy from abroad.

I am not here speaking against Greek and Latin; I think they ought to be studied, and the Latin, at least, understood well, by every gentleman. But whatever foreign languages a young man meddles with (and the more he knows the better), that which he should critically study and labour to get a facility, clearness, and elegancy to express himself in, should be his own, and to this purpose he should daily be exercised in it. (From Thoughts Concerning Education.)

Of History.

The stories of Alexander and Cæsar, further than they instruct us in the art of living well, and furnish us with observations of wisdom and prudence, are not one jot to

be preferred to the history of Robin Hood, or the Seven Wise Masters. I do not deny but history is very useful, and very instructive of human life; but if it be studied only for the reputation of being a historian, it is a very empty thing; and he that can tell all the particulars of Herodotus and Plutarch, Curtius and Livy, without making any other use of them, may be an ignorant man with a good memory, and with all his pains hath only filled his head with Christmas tales. And, which is worse, the greatest part of the history being made up of wars and conquests, and their style, especially the Romans, speaking of valour as the chief if not the only virtue, we are in danger to be misled by the general current and business of history; and, looking on Alexander and Cæsar, and such-like heroes, as the highest instances of human greatness, because they each of them caused the death of 100,000 men, and the ruin of a much greater number, overran a great part of the earth, and killed the inhabitants to possess themselves of their countries—we are apt to make butchery and rapine the chief marks and very essence of human greatness. And if civil history be a great dealer of it, and to many readers thus useless, curious and difficult inquirings in antiquity are much more so; and the exact dimensions of the Colossus, or figure of the Capitol, the ceremonies of the Greek and Roman marriages, or who it was that first coined money; these, I confess, set a man well off in the world, especially amongst the learned, but set him very little on in his way.

...

I shall only add one word and then conclude; and that, is that whereas in the beginning I cut off history from our study as a useless part, as certainly it is where it is read only as a tale that is told; here, on the other side, I recommend it to one who hath well settled in his mind the principles of morality, and knows how to make a judgment on the actions of men, as one of the most useful studies he can apply himself to. There he shall see a picture of the world and the nature of mankind, and so learn to think of men as they are. There he shall see the rise of opinions, and find from what slight and sometimes shameful occasions some of them have taken their rise, which yet afterwards have had great authority, and passed almost for sacred in the world, and borne down all before them. There also one may learn great and useful instructions of prudence, and be warned against the cheats and rogueries of the world, with many more advantages which I shall not here (From Locke's Journal.)

enumerate.

Christmas at Cleves.

DEAR SIR,-Are you at leisure for half an hour's trouble? Will you be content I should keep up the custom of writing long letters with little in them? 'Tis a barren place, and the dull frozen part of the year, and therefore you must not expect great matters. 'Tis enough that at Christmas you have empty Christmas tales fit for the chimney corner. To begin therefore; December 15th (here 25th) Christmas day, about one in the morning I went a-gossipping to our Lady; think me not profane, for the name is a great deal modester than the service I was at. I shall not describe all the particulars I observed in that church, being the principal of the Catholics in Cleves; but only those that were particular to the occasion. Near the high-altar was a little altar for this day's solemnity; the scene was a stable, wherein was an ox, an ass, a cradle, the Virgin, the babe,

they but given them motion, it had been a perfect puppetplay, and might have deserved pence apiece; for they were of the same size and make that our English puppets are; and I am confident these shepherds and this Joseph are kin to that Judith and Holophernes which I have seen at Bartholomew Fair. A little without the stable was a flock of sheep, cut out of cards; and these, as they then stood without their shepherds, appeared to me the best emblem I had seen a long time, and methought represented these poor innocent people, who, whilst their shepherds pretend so much to follow Christ and pay their devotion to him, are left unregarded in the barren wilderness. This was the show: the music to it was all vocal in the quire adjoining, but such as I never heard. They had strong voices, but so ill-tuned, so ill-managed, that it was their misfortune, as well as ours, that they could be heard. He that could not, though he had a cold, make better music with a Chevy Chace [apparently a tune to which the ballad was then sung] over a pot of smooth ale, deserved well to pay the reckoning, and go away athirst. However, I think they were the honestest singing-men I have ever seen, for they endeavoured to deserve their money, and earned it certainly with pains enough; for what they wanted in skill, they made up in loudness and variety. Every one had his own tune, and the result of all was like the noise of choosing parliamentmen, where every one endeavours to cry loudest. Besides the men, there were a company of little choristers. I thought, when I saw them at first, they had danced to the others' music, and that it had been your Gray's Inn revels; for they were jumping up and down about a good charcoal-fire that was in the middle of the quire (this their devotion and their singing was enough, I think, to keep them warm, though it were a very cold night), but it was not dancing, but singing they served for; for when it came to their turns, away they ran to their places, and there they made as good harmony as a concert of little pigs would, and they were much about as cleanly. Their part being done, out they sallied again to the fire, where they played till their cue called them, and then back to their places they huddled. So negligent and slight are they in their service in a place where the nearness of adversaries might teach them to be more careful. . . .

A Letter to Anthony Collins.

OATES, January 24, 1703-4. SIR, Till your confidence in my friendship and freedom with me can preserve you from thinking you have need to make apologies for your silence whenever you omit a post or two, when in your kind way of reckoning you judge a letter to be due, you know me not so well as I could wish; nor am I so little burthensome to you as I desire. I could be pleased to hear from you every day; because the very thoughts of you every day afford me pleasure and satisfaction. But I beseech you to believe that I measure not your kindness by your opportunities of writing; nor do suspect that your friendship flattens, whenever your pen lies a little still. The sincerity you profess and I am convinced of has charms in it against all the little phantoms of ceremony. If it be not so that true friendship sets one free from a scrupulous observance of all those little circumstances, I shall be able to give but a very ill account of myself

to my friends; to whom when I have given possession of my heart, I am less punctual in making of legs and kissing my hand than to other people to whom that out-side civility is all that belongs.

I received the three books you sent me. That which the author sent me deserves my acknowledgment more ways than one; and I must beg you to return it. His demonstrations are so plain, that if this were an age that followed reason, I should not doubt but his would prevail. But to be rational is so glorious a thing that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with the title; but will not debase so excellent a faculty about the conduct of so trivial a thing as they make themselves.

There never was a man better suited to your wishes than I am. You take a pleasure in being troubled with my commissions; and I have no other way of commerce with you, but by such importunities. I can only say, that, were the tables changed, I should, being in your place, have the same satisfaction; and therefore confidently make use of your kind offer. I therefore beg the favour of you to get me Mr Le Clerc's Harmony of the Evangelists in English, bound very finely in calf, gilt, and lettered on the back, and gilt on the leaves. So also I would have Moliere's works (of the best edition you can get them) bound. These books are for ladies; and therefore I would have them fine, and the leaves gilt as well as the back. Moliere of the Paris edition I think is the best, if it can be got in London in quires. You see the liberty I take. I should be glad you could find out something for me to do for you here. I am perfectly, &c. JOHN LOCKE.

Not a few of the shrewd and wise sayings in Locke's philosophy of life might be quoted as aphorisms: thus, 'It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth;' and 'Tis in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure to be deceived.' Locke on quotation deserves to be cited in a work like the present: He that has but ever so little examined the citations of writers cannot doubt how little credit the quotations deserve where the originals are wanting; and consequently how much less quotations of quotations can be relied on.'

There are Lives of Locke by Lord King (1829 and 1830) and Fox Bourne (2 vols. 1876), and small works on his philosophy by Dr Fowler (1880) and Dr Campbell Fraser (1890). The standard edition of the Essay is by Campbell Fraser (2 vols. 1894). The most notable contemporary criticism is contained in the Nouveaux Essais of Leibnitz; the most trenchant of modern critiques is to be found in T. H. Green's Introduction to his edition of Hume (1874). Dr John Brown's essay Locke and Sydenham' in his Hora Subseciva (1858) gives an account of his friendship with the great physician.

Sir Isaac Newton,

greatest of the world's physicists, was born 25th December 1642, at Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire, where his father cultivated a small paternal estate ; and from childhood he manifested a strong inclination towards mechanical and mathematical pursuits. Having received his early education at the grammar-school of Grantham, at the age of fifteen he was summoned to take charge of the farm; but, found unsuited for this uncongenial

occupation, he was allowed to return to school and follow the bent of his genius. In 1661 he was admitted a sizar in Trinity College, Cambridge, became a Junior Fellow in 1667, and M.A. in 1668. In 1669 he succeeded Barrow as mathematical professor; in 1671 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society, and communicated to it his new theory of Light. He served repeatedly in Parliament as member for the university, was appointed Warden (1696) and Master (1699) of the Mint during Montague's reform of the currency, became President of the Royal Society in 1703, and two years afterwards received the honour of knighthood from Queen Anne. While at the Mint he devoted himself entirely to his official work, refusing testily to be 'dunned and teased by foreigners about mathematical things' so long as he was about the King's business.' To the unrivalled genius and sagacity of Newton the world is indebted for many splendid discoveries in mathematics and physics, above all of the laws which regulate the movements of the solar system. The first step towards the establishment of the Newtonian system- his philosophy, as it used to be called-was his discovery of the law of gravitation, which, as he proved, affected the vast orbs that revolve around the sun not less than the smallest objects on our own globe. It was Voltaire who gave the apple story currency in its present shape. His nephew's record was: 'In the same year [1665], at his mother's in Lincolnshire, when musing in a garden it came into his thoughts that the same power of gravity which made an apple fall from the tree to the ground was not limited to a certain distance.' He saw that there was a remarkable power or principle which caused all bodies to descend towards the centre of the earth, and that this unseen power operated at the top of the highest mountains and at the bottom of the deepest mines. When the true cause, the law of gravitation, dawned upon his mind, Newton was so much agitated as to be unable to work out the problem. When he did attempt to explain on this theory the lunar and planetary motions, the then erroneous estimate of the radius of the earth produced such discrepancies that he gave up his calculation for work in optics and about telescopes; and it was not till after he had utilised Picard's more correct measure of the earth (1670) that he was able to work out his theory, finally demonstrated by 1684, and for ever put beyond cavil (see page 159). The whole material universe,' Sir David Brewster said, 'was spread out before him; the sun with all his attending planets, the planets with all their satellites, the comets wheeling in their eccentric orbits, and the system of the fixed stars stretching to the remotest limits of space.' When Columbus first descried the shores of the new world he had adventurously sailed to explore, he attained an unparalleled pitch of moral and intellectual grandeur. So did Milton when, old and blind and poor, he had realised the

But

dream of his youth, completed his great epic, and sent it forth on its voyage of immortality. the achievement of Newton was still more transcendent perhaps the most sublime ever permitted to mortal; he had done more than any mere man towards the scientific understanding and explanation of the world.

The work in which Newton unfolded his simple but sublime system was expounded in Latin in De Motu Corporum, and finally appeared in 1687 as the truly epochmaking Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica. To Newton we owe likewise discoveries by which the science of optics was so entirely changed that he may very justly be termed its

founder. He was

the first to conceive and demonstrate the divisibility of light into rays of seven different colours, and possessing dif ferent degrees of refrangibility. His thirty years' optical investigations were set forth in 1704 in Optics: or a Treatise of the Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light. Controversies about the priority of Newton's discovery of fluxions and Leib

of the Covenant. Only one was issued at oncethat on The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, in which Newton suggested how astronomy might be used to check and verify Babylonian and Egyptian chronology. An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture (John, v. 7, and 1 Tim. iii. 16) first appeared in a perfect form in Dr Horsley's edition of his works in 1779. Newton, like all competent scholars then and since, regarded the 'Three Heavenly Witnesses'

nitz's (independent) discovery of the differential calculus embittered many years of Newton's life. He wrote not a little on chemistry, had studied the alchemists carefully, and in his earlier years actually sought for the philosopher's stone. Like his illustrious contemporaries Boyle, Barrow, and Locke, Newton devoted much attention to theology as well as to natural science. His Observations upon the Prophecies of Holy Writ, particularly the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St John, was published after his death. Among his manuscripts were found many other theological pieces, mostly on such subjects as the Prophetic Style, the Host of Heaven, the Revelation, the Temple of Solomon, the Sanctuary, the Working of the Mystery of Iniquity, and the Contest between the Host of Heaven and the Transgressors

་

as an interpolation, and held that 'God manifest in the flesh' should be (as Hort and recent orthodox scholars agree) 'who was manifest' thereby incurring a charge of Unitarian views. That he was far from being an orthodox Trinitarian appears from a

sort of creed or confession printed

by Sir David Brewster, one of the articles of which is: To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. That is, we are to worship the Father alone as God Almighty, and Jesus alone as the Lord, the Messiah, the Great

King, the Lamb of God who was slain, and hath redeemed us with his blood, and made us kings and priests.' Another is: We need not pray to Christ to intercede for us. If we pray aright to the Father, he will intercede for us.' Newton's decided Arian convictions are visible also in the strong ill-will he cherished-like the Deists, with whom as a devout believer in revelation he had little in common-against the Nicene Council and its methods, his utter disrespect for Athanasius (as a liar, falsifier of evidence, and malignant enemy), his pronounced suspicion of every step that led to the acceptance of the 'homoousion,' and his query, 'Whether Christ sent his apostles to | preach metaphysics to the unlearned common people and to their wives and children?' His unwillingness that his views on these points (though