Locke, John (1632-1704)

A contemporary portrait of the 17th-century English philosopher John Locke, who maintained that experience is the only source of knowledge. Locke was also a qualified doctor, and it was in his role as a physician that he entered the household of the politician Lord Ashley, becoming his secretary and finally his protégé in governmental circles.

English philosopher. His Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) maintained that experience is the only source of knowledge (empiricism), and that ‘we can have knowledge no farther than we have ideas’ prompted by such experience. Two Treatises on Government (1690) helped to form contemporary ideas of liberal democracy.

For Locke, the physical universe was a mechanical system of material bodies, composed of corpuscules, or ‘invisible particles’. He believed that at birth the mind was a blank, and that all ideas came from sense impressions.

His Two Treatises on Government supplied the classical statement of Whig theory and enjoyed great influence in America and France. It supposed that governments derive their authority from popular consent (regarded as a ‘contract’), so that a government may be rightly overthrown if it infringes such fundamental rights of the people as religious freedom.

Locke was born in Somerset and studied at Oxford. He practised medicine, and in 1667 became secretary to the Earl of Shaftesbury. He consequently fell under suspicion as a Whig and in 1683 fled to Holland, where he lived until the 1688 revolution brought William of Orange to the English throne. In later life he published many works on philosophy, politics, theology, and economics; these include Letters on Toleration (1689-92) and Some Thoughts concerning Education (1693).