Peter C. Myers 0847690989, 0867690997

Citation preview

Our Only Star and Compass

Our Only Star and Compass Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality Peter C. Myers

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Oxford

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 12 Hid’s Copse Road Cumnor Hill, Oxford 0X2 9JJ, England Copyright © 1998 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Myers, Peter C., 1959Our only star and compass : Locke and the struggle for political rationality / Peter C. Myers, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8476-9098-9 (cloth : alk. paper). —ISBN 0-8676-9099-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Locke, John, 1632-1704—Contributions in political science. 2. Liberalism. I. Title. JC153.L87M94 1998 320.1'01—dc21 98-36862 CIP

Printed in the United States of America © The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

To my mother and father and in loving memory of my grandfather Harold L. Kipp

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Contents Preface

ix

1

Introduction: Locke, Liberalism, and Political Rationality

1

2

The Question of the Foundation

37

3

Natural Science and Natural History

67

4

Natural History and the State of Nature

107

5

Nature and the Rational Pursuit of Happiness

137

6

Locke’s Constitutional Design

179

7

Conclusion

245

Bibliography

251

Index

263

About the Author

269 vii

Preface That political liberalism is in trouble is an opinion commonly held among con¬ temporary academic observers. That liberalism is always in trouble, or that its troubles are inherent in its first principles, is an almost equally common opinion. Those who wish to preserve or enlarge the benefits of liberal practice commonly find themselves compelled, therefore, to undertake a wide-ranging search either for alternative first principles or for an argument to satisfy us that we do not need a foundational argument to have the liberal practice that we desire. Hence recent scholarship recommends to us, among other models, a liberal Aristotle, a liberal St. Thomas, a liberal Nietzsche. I do not ridicule such efforts, although I find in them varying degrees of plausibility. Some seem to me persuasive and salutary. Nonetheless, they remind me in general of Montesquieu’s observation concerning Harrington, who “built Chalcedon with the coast of Byzantium before his eyes.” Liberals may be justifiably proud of their mistrust of the love of one’s own, but they should also be alert to the possibility that the object of their search may lie, after all, very close to home. Home, for liberalism as I understand it, is located foremost in the political philosophy of John Locke. To many, this location only confirms the difficulty. For until recently, the field of Locke scholarship, notable for its lack of consensus and even acrimony, displayed a relatively broad consensus on the bottom line in the denial that Locke could meaningfully assist present-day liberals in addressing the deep questions that trouble them. According to the relatively long-standing, general scholarly division, Locke was either irrelevant to us or all too relevant. Readers of this literature confronted two very different Lockes, or perhaps one Locke living a double life: the Locke of the Cambridge school (Locke by day, as I like to think of him), well-meaning and pious but also timebound and theoretical¬ ly somewhat befuddled, versus the Straussian Locke (Locke by night), philosophiIX

X

Preface

cally acute and universally relevant, but also a morally corrosive propagator of egoism, materialism, and skepticism. With this study I mean to add my own voice to those of a number of recent scholars who fmd in Locke an underappreciated yet extraordinary philosophic depth, lying beneath a sober, moderate moral and politi¬ cal teaching. It may be true, as one of the most challenging lines of criticism has it, that Locke simplifies man to get results. (The phrase belongs to Allan Bloom.) But one need not be a Lockean to maintain that all constitutional orders simplify, that none is sufficiently broad or deep to accommodate all or the highest human forms. And one need not be a Machiavellian to be impressed by the fact that with all the pluses and minuses considered, Locke gets results to a degree that no political alterna¬ tive, premodem or modem, liberal or nonliberal, has equaled. I think it safest to proceed from the premise that so far as Locke simplifies, he does so by design, and that in the decisive respect, his success is better traceable to this design than to historical accident. So I seek to achieve a sympathetic understanding of Locke’s design, in the hope that with an enhanced understanding of the case for Locke, we will be in a better position to assess the virtues and limitations of modem liberal constitutionalism and of modem political thought more generally. I have come to think of this book as marking the completion of the first stage of my academic career. This seems an opportune time, therefore, to acknowledge the deepest of the many debts that I have incurred along the way. As an undergraduate at Northwestern University, I was introduced to political philos¬ ophy by Donald Strickland and confirmed in the desire to devote my career to its study by the late Erich Heller, whose profound and charming pedagogy in his courses in comparative literature utterly defied confinement by conventional disciplinary boundaries. Among my teachers in the graduate program at Loyola University Chicago, Jim Wiser was a model of pedagogical clarity and a source of much-appreciated encouragement and solid advice. Jean Yarbrough struggled persistently—it must often have seemed to her, vainly—to teach me what it meant to be a professional student of politics. As I continue to leam this lesson, she gains my ever-deepening appreciation and gratitude. In their different ways, she and Tom Engeman introduced me to the serious study of modern and liberal political thought, at once showing me the deep difficulties that modem liberalism confronts and guiding me toward a fairer, more mature appreciation of its virtues. More than any other, Tom Engeman improved my doctoral dissertation with his pene¬ trating criticism and his insistence on pursuing the question to its end. All were and remain good friends. I am grateful, too, to my departmental colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and in particular to two department chairmen, Tom Barth and Len Gambrell, for their friendship, support, and uncommon pa¬ tience in affording me the time to try to get Locke right. In recent years, I have benefited enormously from many conversations about Locke and much else in the field of political philosophy with Michael and Catherine Zuckert, in whose deeply perceptive criticism, scholarly example, and friendship I continue to fmd much enlightenment, inspiration, and true pleasure. I thank also John Hittinger, the

Preface

xi

reader for Rowman & Littlefield, for his thoughtful criticisms and helpful sugges¬ tions. Whatever its persisting defects, this is certainly a much better book than it would have been absent the generous assistance of all. I am pleased, too, to acknowledge the institutional support I received in the preparation of this book. The Office of Graduate and Professional Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire provided grants in 1992 and 1993 enabling me to travel to Oxford to examine the Bodleian Library’s Lovelace Collection of the Manuscripts of John Locke. During the fall semester of 1994, thanks to grants from the Earhart Foundation and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, I received a much-needed release from other academic commitments to rethink the design of my study. Portions of chapters 5 and 6 appeared in Interpretation (vol. 22, no. 1; Fall 1994) as “Equality, Property, and the Problem of Partisanship: The Lockean Constitution as Mixed Regime.” Portions of chapter 4 appeared in Polity (voi. 27, no. 4; Summer 1995) as “Between Divine and Human Sovereignty: The State of Nature and the Basis of Locke’s Political Thought.” I thank the editors of these journals for their kind permission to reprint this material. My most profound debt, which I can neither adequately describe nor ever fully repay, is to my family.

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Chapter One

Introduction: Locke, Liberalism, and Political Rationality My study of the political philosophy of John Locke is both political and theoretical in its inspiration, and considers Locke’s political philosophy in its relations both to the liberal theories prevailing in our own society and to the great works of classical and modem political philosophy. It is bom first of a political concern for the fate of the modem liberal republic, a constitutional order that, however imperfect, has spread the blessings of liberty and prosperity to unprecedentedly large and growing portions of the populations that govern themselves by its principles. This political concern ascends to the level of a theoretical or philo¬ sophical concern, so far as the liberal society, to a degree unequalled by any other constitutional form, stakes its moral and political health on the status of reason in public and private life. As Publius famously remarks in introducing his defense of the proposed U. S. Constitution, it seems to have fallen upon the American people, as the vanguard of a new liberal-republican order, “to decide the impor¬ tant question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”1 My study thus represents a kind of case study. I consider the study of Locke before all others indispensable for the purpose of measuring the moral and theoret¬ ical resources of modem liberal constitutionalism, because I find in Locke’s political philosophy the deepest, most philosophically self-conscious expression of modem liberal thought. At its deepest level, it represents an exploration of the

1

2

Chapter One

manner in which the modem liberal constitutional form requires and permits us to address the Socratic question of the relation of reason to healthy political life. In the chapters that follow, I elaborate Locke’s political philosophy with a view toward showing that, notwithstanding either its temporal remoteness or its important continuities with much contemporary liberal theory, in Locke we can find, relative to much contemporary liberalism and to much of the rest of modem political philosophy, a superior, more realistic, more philosophically self-con¬ scious and politically sensitive account of political reason and of the basis of liberal politics. To prepare more adequately my elaboration of this main thesis, it is necessary for me first to survey briefly the condition of contemporary liberal theory, adumbrating those strengths and shortcomings of prevailing contemporary theories that warrant a reconsideration of Locke and bring the virtues of Locke’s liberalism into sharper relief. To the same end, especially in view of the often heated controversies that persist among interpretive schools in this field, it is necessary for me briefly to clarify and defend the principles that govern my interpretive approach to the study of Locke, and to situate my reading of the substance of Locke’s political philosophy in relation to major alternative readings.

On Contemporary Liberal Theory Among students of liberal constitutionalism, my general sympathies lie with those who argue for a more fully and forthrightly rationalist, purposive, even “perfec¬ tionist” liberalism. Moved by influential communitarian critiques of liberal theory,2 by some increasingly evident and alarming practical failings of liberal societies, and by the inadequacy of prevailing liberal theories to respond effec¬ tively to either, some contemporary scholars are gaining a growing audience for the proposition that liberalism must learn or relearn to speak the language of virtue. Responding to prominent contemporary liberal theorists as well as to their communitarian critics, these scholars, including William Galston, Joseph Raz, Stephen Salkever, J. Budziszewski, and (to some degree) Stephen Macedo, argue persuasively that liberal theory is not properly understood as a doctrine of teleo¬ logically neutral, abstract individualism, and accordingly that liberal society is not properly understood as an association of self-seeking individuals guided only by a more-or-less arbitrarily contrived set of procedural rules of distributive fairness.3 To the contrary, in this view, liberal political society is grounded in a broadly inclusive yet distinct conception of human well-being and sustained by a distinct set of moral and intellectual virtues, both of which are needful and worthy of defense. Finding liberal practice taken as a whole superior to—more morally appealing than—the depictions of liberal society in communitarian and much modem liberal theory, liberal perfectionists fmd it necessary to reconceive liberal theory with a view toward explaining more adequately and providing firmer support for what is best in liberal practice. According to liberal perfectionists, liberal political societies are characteristi¬ cally ordered toward the pursuance of a plurality of specific, substantive goods,

Introduction

3

including mainly the following: the security of persons and of personal property; material productivity and a comfortable general standard of living; the pursuit of individual, social, and spiritual happiness within an expansive sphere of freedom and choice, protected by a constitutionally limited government and by an ethic of tolerance and civility; and the free and full exercise of deliberative rationality, or the cultivation of the virtue of rational self-government.4 The plural character of liberal goods does not imply, however, that they stand together on a plane of equality in their rank ordering as justifications of the liberal constitutional order. In a world in which so many are subjected to random or deliberate violence, to political or religious oppression, and to poverty and dehumanizing labor, among other ills, no humane and thoughtful person could disregard the goodness of personal security, civil and political liberty, and material prosperity. Nonetheless, one may insist upon the goodness of such characteristically liberal goals and also acknowledge that in the final analysis they must stand subordinate to some good or goods beyond themselves. To value life, liberty, and prosperity as ultimate purposes, categorically superior in rank to the objects or contents of the choices that they make possible, is to reverse the proper relation between means and ends and thus to lose sight of the dignity of the beings whose well-being we seek to secure. Among the goods commonly mentioned by liberal perfectionists, the one that is capable of standing as an end in itself and therefore of justifying the liberal constitutional order is the life of rational liberty or deliberative rationality.5 Those who wish to defend the virtue of liberalism must therefore defend the virtue, the excellence and goodness, of the rational life. The Failings of Neutralist and Antifoundationalist Liberalism The failure to take sufficiently seriously the need for such a defense represents the decisive failing of alternative forms of contemporary liberal theory. Of those forms, the most influential in setting the terms of debate among liberal thinkers for the past few decades has been the theory of neutralist liberalism, represented above all by the political thought of John Rawls.6 Neutralist liberalism signifies generally a constitutional doctrine subjecting government to a fundamental proce¬ dural or justificatory constraint, such that it must maintain a posture of principled neutrality with respect to particular conceptions of human happiness or the human good.7 It is conceived in large part in opposition to perfectionist doctrines, under¬ stood as doctrines that would allocate public resources preferentially to the fur¬ therance of some particular conception of human excellence or ultimate purpose.8 In assessing the neutralist account, one must first acknowledge that Rawls and other neutralist theorists display an admirable appreciation of the devotion to individual rights, the generous inclusiveness, the compassion and tolerance, and the skeptical resistance to doctrinal dogmatism and practical authoritarianism that characterize the liberal tradition at its best. Moreover, neutralists place significant emphasis on the virtue of rationality in individual and societal deliberations, as in Rawls’s implicit location of the basis of human rights in the capacity to deliberate

4

Chapter One

about rules of justice and to form a rational “life-plan.” Yet, however substantial its virtues, in the final analysis contemporary liberal neutralism suffers from its proponents’ incapacity or unwillingness to provide adequate theoretical justifica¬ tion for their conceptions of the rational life and the rational society. The difficulty proceeds directly from an insistence upon conceiving of human reason so far as possible as an instrumental faculty, incapable of passing judgment on the ultimate choiceworthiness of any end or object of desire relative to any other.9 To adapt a remark of Leo Strauss, this general conception of reason leaves us with an ethic of retail rationality and wholesale irrationality.10 Its implication is that a life devoted, say, to rational inquiry into the nature of the right or the good cannot be judged more intrinsically respectable than a life devoted, in Rawls’s notorious illustration, to the counting of blades of grass.11 This instrumen¬ talist conception of reason in turn reflects a broader supposition, especially preva¬ lent among first-generation neutralists,12 concerning the moral inclusiveness of the neutralist society. The noninstrumentalist task of choosing among ultimate ends loses its political urgency in a constitutional order that is capable of providing comfortable accommodations for all reasonable, nonoppressive ends or life-plans. The difficulty in this supposition is twofold. Even if we accept this claim of inclusiveness, it would yet seem incumbent upon neutralist theorists to justify the choice of justice itself, or the pursuance of nonoppressive over oppressive ends. Although he does devote serious attention to the need for education to cultivate the desired sense of justice, in view of his apparent presumptuousness with respect to the compatibility of justice and human happiness,13 one has reason to doubt that Rawls, along with other neutralists, has taken the full measure of the unjust or tyrannical human desires.14 However that may be, as numerous critics have observed, there is still better reason to doubt that the society envisioned by liberal neutralist theorists can be truly inclusive of even all reasonable or nonoppressive ends. In its more extreme formulations, the neutralist conception of liberal society resembles the hyperbolic description of the democracy in Plato’s Republic as “the fairest of the regimes,” the regime that “contains all species of regimes” and thus appears “like a manycolored cloak decorated in all hues.”15 Like its antifoundationalist successor, the neutralist liberal democracy appears as a huge, all-encompassing carnival tent, providing welcoming shelter for a plenary diversity of visions of the good or modes of living.16 The decisive difficulty in this conception traces directly to its basic neutralist, antiperfectionist premise. Ex nihilo, nihilum: no doctrine of justice can derive from a foundation that is truly neutral with respect to the human good.17 The regime that neutralist theorists envision is in fact not teleologically neutral but is founded upon unacknowledged controversial and even exclusionary assumptions concerning justice, goodness, and the nature of the human self. Although neutralist theorists’ insistence upon the distinctive inclusiveness of the liberal society amounts to a claim that such a society excludes only the unrea¬ sonable, the intolerant, or the fanatical,18 it would seem to involve a peculiar, dogmatic definition of reasonableness, as it would seem a peculiar expression of

Introduction

5

liberal tolerance or openness, to maintain that all conceptions of the good for which a liberal-neutralist society would be incommodious are ipso facto unreason¬ able. It is clear that some perfectionist ends that are not inherently fanatical or resistant to reason can be seriously pursued only in societies or cultures that consider their promotion a public priority. To those with a genuine faith in a strict, legalistic revealed religion, for instance, or to those devoted to a rigorous, demanding conception of virtue, a constitutionally secularized or morally pluralis¬ tic society, by its very effort at neutrality, may appear hostile to their highest purposes. Unless they would claim that no reasonable person could harbor such devotions, liberal neutralists must concede that their principles of justice are not ultimately neutral, but are partial in a nontrivial way. An acknowledgment of its own nontrivial partiality, however, is fatal to any society’s or doctrine’s claim of teleological neutrality. As J. Budziszewski wittily observes, “it isn’t enough . . . to show that some roads lead to Rome, that many roads lead to Rome, that most roads lead to Rome, or that our favorite roads lead to Rome. It isn’t Rome unless all roads lead there. . . . Not all roads lead there; therefore it isn’t Rome.”19 An acknowledgment of the nontrivial partiality of the liberal society marks the transition from first- to second-generation neutralist theory. Renouncing his stated aspiration in A Theory of Justice to set forth, sub specie aeternitatis, the true, rationally accessible, universally agreeable principles of justice,20 Rawls has recently proposed a forthright reconception of liberalism as a “political”—a self¬ consciously partial—not a “metaphysical” or universal doctrine.21 The revised theory retains much of the old theory’s inclusionary optimism, especially in the claim that the liberal order can accommodate all reasonable “comprehensive doctrines.”22 But a doctrine qualifies as reasonable, in the revised account, so far as it “does not reject the essentials of a democratic regime. ”23 Thus the principles of liberal justice are to be understood as contingent upon a specific commitment to modem constitutional democracy. By replanting his argument firmly in the soil of a constitutional-democratic political culture, Rawls proposes in effect a liberal form of communitarianism.24 He produces a conception of “situated reason” to correspond to the “situated” or communally constituted self that communitarian critics conceived in opposition to the apparently abstract rationalism of his earlier theory.25 Likewise, by asserting the priority of democracy to philosophy in the evaluation of alternative concep¬ tions of justice as well as happiness, Rawls establishes a kinship with postmodern, antifoundationalist liberalism, whose most forthright, enthusiastic exponent is Richard Rorty.26 Although Rawls continues to profess an openness to the possible truth of one or another comprehensive doctrine and even maintains that a thor¬ oughgoing skepticism is destructive of political liberalism,27 he shares with Rorty the opinions that liberal democracy does not need to justify itself in public by means of a genuinely philosophical argument and that liberal-democratic purposes are indeed best served by a refusal to admit such arguments as public justifica¬ tions. For both Rawls and Rorty, the reasonableness of a given principle of justice

6

Chapter One

is to be judged not in terms of its truth but rather in terms of its usefulness in advancing liberal-democratic purposes.28 In proposing a radical, uncompromising rejection of all philosophical reasoning or truth claims, Rorty extends or generalizes Rawls’s political antifoundationalism, believing the establishment of this antifoundationalist doctrine to be a liberating event. When we reify our inherently conventional vocabularies, imagin¬ ing our linguistic impositions to be truly, exclusively representative of a naturally or divinely given order, in Rorty’s view, we give ourselves cause to tyrannize over other people by forcing them to conform to the dictates of vocabularies they may not share. Whereas the vocabulary of Enlightenment rationalism may have originally served liberal purposes—especially in its founding struggle against religious sectarianism and authoritarianism—it has by now outlived its useful¬ ness.29 Rorty proclaims and celebrates its self-destruction, along with the general discrediting of our long-held theological and philosophical beliefs in a transcendent moral order. This postmetaphysical disenchantment of the world prepares the achievement of a truly utopian liberalism, in which a communal ethic of compas¬ sionate and ever-more inclusive solidarity coexists with, or is even sustained and leavened by, a private, ironic ethic of individual self-creation or self-expression.30 With other proponents of a purposive, perfectionist liberalism, I contend that the ascendancy of neutralist and antifoundationalist doctrines poses potentially grave dangers for the preservation of the virtues, above all the devotion to reason¬ ableness, upon which a sound liberal order depends. Contrary to the claims of their proponents, these doctrines would effect not a refinement or a solidifying of the original liberal vision but rather a decisive regime change: the regime that staked its original claim on the ground of reflection and choice would now teach its subjects to regard it and themselves as mere by-products of accident and force. Although intended to correct assertions of unjust self-interest in constitutionalpolitical deliberations, the neutralist device of dialogic constraint nonetheless effectively forecloses the argumentation required to justify the conception of the good or goods that lie at the foundation of even the liberal society.31 Likewise, by ultimately limiting the relevance of his reasoning about justice to liberal-demo¬ cratic political cultures, Rawls would effectively deprive liberal-democratic governments of any means for justifying themselves theoretically, in response to external or internal challenges rooted in nondemocratic principles.32 The liberal democracy’s characteristic commitment to rational discussion would then resolve into a practice of arbitrariness in its relations with nondemocratic groups or societies, and with at least those among its own citizens who would have their civic allegiance rest upon a rational ground.33 For his part, Rorty is fully aware that his approach, even more than that of the later Rawls, will provoke accusations of irrationalism and moral relativism. As a principled antifoundationalist, he counsels evasion of such charges on the theoreti¬ cal plane34 and focuses on allaying the practical concerns that inspire it. He insists that political communities have no vital need for nonrelative truths or rational justification: “a belief can still regulate action, can still be thought worth dying

Introduction

7

for, among people who are quite aware that this belief is caused by nothing deeper than contingent historical circumstance.”35 Supposing for the sake of argument this confident assertion to be true, however, one comes to the deep difficulty in the antifoundationalist position: even or especially if the opinion of their ultimate contingency did not weaken the force of our moral-political convictions, it would surely undermine our capacity for criticizing them. It is one thing to say that a society could be both reflectively self-conscious and closed, or even that such a society could be viable or healthy. But it is quite another to say that such a society could be a liberal society. Following Michael Oakeshott, Rorty denies the legiti¬ mate possibility of asking, ‘Is ours a moral society?’ For the members of any particular community, as Rorty sees it, morality is simply a form of collective self-assertion. It is simply what we do, and truth refers simply to those opinions that, at least for the moment, prevail.36 Of course Rorty is sensitive, to some degree, to the dangers of closure. While he conceives of the liberal-democratic form at bottom as merely another form of tribalism or ethnocentrism, he insists upon its distinctively self-doubting and progressively inclusive character. Liberal democracy is the form of ethnocentrism that, above all others, mistrusts ethnocentrism.37 Nonetheless, there is every reason to fear that the Rortyan political society would exhibit extreme and self¬ destructive forms of both liberal and democratic partisanship. With respect to the liberals, Rorty attempts to show that by its own internal logic, his ethic of liberal ironism or individual artistic creativity should find only private and thus socially benign expressions, superseding rather than emboldening the desire to rule. In the belief that the ironist practice of self-creation has “nothing ... to do with ques¬ tions of social policy,” Rorty finds the antiliberal politics of both Nietzsche and Heidegger “adventitious and idiosyncratic. ” Their quest for the “historical sub¬ lime” constitutes a relapse into metaphysics and thus a betrayal of the ironist’s ideal of self-creation.38 One might question the assertion that the ironist self has no cultural or political preconditions, along with the presumption that the effect of the ironist ethic on private life would carry no socially harmful consequences. But there is a more fundamental difficulty. What significance can any charge of idiosyncrasy hold for the Rortyan ironist, for whom all creative endeavors, including moral and political creations, are fundamentally idiosyncratic? Why should Rorty interpret Nietzsche’s politics in particular as a relapse into metaphys¬ ics, rather than as an expression of artistic creativity? Why should the creative ironist prefer the private self to the public world as an artistic medium? Likewise with respect to the democrats, Rorty displays no significant appreci¬ ation of the danger that the self-doubting inclusiveness that he praises could itself turn willful and dogmatic, issuing in a spirit of revenge pitting the historically “excluded” or “marginalized” and their allies against the “included.” He recog¬ nizes at best only partially the democratic injustice inherent in a dogmatic enfran¬ chisement of the common over the distinctive—over the distinctively meritorious in particular, as opposed to the merely different. In general, it is difficult to see how a teaching that reduces the true to the effectual and proudly licenses an

8

Chapter One

attitude of moral self-assertion could fail to exacerbate the tendency among the powerful in any society, including professed liberals and democratic majorities, to identify justice with the dictates of their own wills. In effect applying his principled antiessentialism to bodies of thought even more freely than earlier modems applied such a principle to natural bodies, Rorty supposes that although the pragmatism and ironism that he would cultivate in fact grow from Machiavel¬ lian and Nietzschean roots, they will yield liberal, democratic, and pluralist, not Machiavellian and Nietzschean, fruit.39 In the end, this supposition rests upon nothing more substantial than his own idiosyncratic hopefulness.40 In sum, contemporary liberal theory in its most influential forms, occasioned in large measure by the disorders of our own century, suffers from enthusiasms that ultimately undermine its capacity to respond effectively to those disorders. Desiring to reestablish the rule of reason over irrational partisanship, liberal neutralists initially flattered themselves in thinking that they could establish legitimate government by means still more “glorious”—because still more ratio¬ nalist—than those of the revolutionaries of 1688. They felt it imperative to demon¬ strate that, with the discovery of the right, properly constrained rationalist doc¬ trine, reason could rule not only bloodlessly but so inclusively as to negate the necessity even of arguing against various partisan teleological or theological claims. Meanwhile, believing a more radical and comprehensive critique useful for advancing still further the cause of individual and social liberation, antifoundationalist liberals announced their unmasking of the partisanship inherent in reason itself and their restoration of the poetic imagination to a status of sovereignty. Pushing to extremes liberalism’s original assertion of skeptical reason against authoritarian dogmatism, these variants recommend to us, respectively, a society that is blind to its own particularity and a society that can see only its particularity. Both place in grave danger the truly liberal society’s distinctive capacity for selfcriticism, along with the opportunity to achieve the full degree of reasonable inclusiveness of which it is capable. Both misconceive the social and cultural conditions necessary for the flourishing of liberal freedom. An ethic consisting of an unstable coupling of willful or impulsive self-expression and plaintive, passive dependence replaces one of rational, responsible self-government. Liberal toler¬ ance falls captive to a “shrewish,” jealous impostor, whose espousal requires the renunciation of other virtues vital to the well-being of liberal society.41 Believing itself either free to flirt with irrationalism or compelled to accommodate its advances, much contemporary liberalism seems increasingly unable to resist the specious, insistent charms of romantic antiliberalism, in the form either of a selftranscending communitarianism or an anarchic individualist liberationism. In this it risks losing its distinctive virtues, and thus losing itself.

The Problem of Liberal Rationalism What is required is the construction or recovery of a genuinely rationalist liberalism, a liberalism fully conscious of the distinctiveness of its claims, capable

Introduction

9

of addressing deep philosophical questions concerning human nature and the status of human reason, and thus capable of learning from and responding philosophi¬ cally to challenges originating outside the liberal tradition. Of course, to establish that the goods, virtues, and rights characteristic of the best liberal practice require a stronger explication and defense than neutralist and antifoundationalist theories can provide is not to establish that such an explication and defense are present in any readily available theoretical alternative. In particular, one may question whether even the liberal perfectionist alternatives can generate a truly effective response to the antifoundationalist critique. Pursuing this line of questioning to its ultimate conclusion, one must consider the possibility that the modem liberal demand for public justification or popular self-government by reflection and choice is simply an impossible, inevitably fmstrated demand, inconsistent not only with the premises of modem liberal thought but indeed with human nature and the nature of political life itself. One need not endorse its categorical rejection of the rationalist tradition to find the postmodern, antifoundationalist critique useful in calling attention again to the problematic status of reason in political life. Viewed especially in the light of the less restrained expressions of modem or Enlightenment rationalism, this critique serves a useful purpose so far as it provides a sobering reminder of the Platonic insistence upon the cavelike, nonrational character of the political community. From the Platonic perspective, the health of the city requires respect for the fact that human beings are primarily and generally creatures of faith, governable directly by divine laws or by the productions of the poetic imagination and at best indirectly by the power of reason. In turn, the health of the truly rational, philo¬ sophic life requires that it look beyond political life to find the proper objects of its own striving. Socrates’ demand in The Republic for the conjunction of philoso¬ phy and political power is paradoxical and ironic due to the city’s natural resis¬ tance to direct rational appeal. The implication is that only by preserving its essentially suprapolitical orientation can reason preserve its dignity and therewith whatever modest measure of power to guide political life, mainly in secret or by indirection, it may possess. By contrast, finding the health of political society threatened in their own day by professedly sovereign faiths, and mindful as well of the dubious and potentially oppressive character of teleological reason, the revolutionary originators of modem political philosophy found it necessary to challenge the Platonic paradox. Whereas in Platonic political philosophy the goodness of the life of reason is protected by its elevation above the terrain of politics, in the thought of the early modems reason is to rise within political life by means of its more general self¬ demotion, by a lowering or even a denial of its status as a human end. Through the formation of prudent alliances—by choosing the right passion to obey, that it might thereby govern in turn42—reason can make effective its claim to political power. As Machiavelli himself warns, however, it is unsafe to depend on merce¬ nary or auxiliary arms, arms that are never truly your own.43 One may question whether, availing itself of the arms of supposedly safe, low but solid passions,

10

Chapter One

reason in the work of the early modems surrenders its true claim to legitimate rule in exchange for an evanescent power, only to find itself in the end subject to powers still more foreign and still more threatening than those it had originally resisted. It is therefore understandable that the revolution of early modem rationalism has generated a late- or postmodern backlash, as its enthusiastic vision of a fully rationalized political society seems inherently incapable of withstanding the rational scrutiny to which it necessarily subjects itself. Likewise, it is understand¬ able that even commentators appreciative of the virtues of liberal practice should harbor grave doubts with respect to the long-term viability of modem liberalism in the face of ceaseless assaults upon its theoretical foundations. One must take with the greatest seriousness the opinion of thoughtful pessimists that modem liberalism, animated decisively by a nonteleological principle of rational selfinterest, shows ever more clearly its dependence upon moral and theoretical resources that it is rapidly depleting and cannot itself renew.44 Yet, however understandable and serious these postmodern and traditionalist doubts, they do not provide sufficient cause for surrender—neither with respect to the ancient hope for the indirect rule of reason in political life nor with respect to the modem liberal aspiration toward public justification and popular self-government. Contrary to the more outspoken postmodern critics, to dismiss the entire tradition of Western rationalism as dogmatic “metaphysics” is to endorse a crude caricature, a successor to that fashioned by Nietzsche’s supposedly enlightened Last Men as they blithely declare that “Formerly, all the world was mad.”45 As Galston observes, the postmodern rejection of the aspiration to transcultural reasoning “rests on the fallacy of attributing to philosophy per se every mistake that one philosopher—Descartes—committed in executing a single, idiosyncratic agenda.”46 What is truly objectionable in the more enthusiastic expressions of modem political thought is not their rationalism but rather their hyper-rationalism, their dogmatic insistence upon the rule of one or another purportedly scientific doctrine. The proper response cannot be found, therefore, in a revolt against the governance of reason. When reason withdraws completely from political life as well as when it becomes excessively politicized, the result is likely to be a form of tyranny. What is needed is a properly, moderately political conception of reason, one that somehow preserves the virtues while moderating the vices associ¬ ated with premodern and modem conceptions, respectively. Liberalism requires, on the one hand, an account of reason that preserves a measure of its Platonic dignity as a human end, yet avoids either elevating it altogether beyond political life or dangerously flattering its suprarational preten¬ sions. On the other hand, it requires an account that preserves the common, political accessibility of modem reason along with its salutary suspicion of dog¬ matic teleological claims, yet avoids reducing reason to an instmment of the subrational. Some prominent contemporary liberal perfectionists propose that the essentials of the account of political reason that we seek are to be found in Aris¬ totle. The edifice of liberal practice described in the works of Locke, Montes-

Introduction

11

quieu, the American Framers, and Tocqueville, among others, can stand most securely, in this view, on an Aristotelian foundation.47 The proposition that Aris¬ totle can provide helpful theoretical support for liberal politics seems to me entirely defensible. My choice to study Locke rests upon the premise, however, that to find a viable, rationalist foundation of liberal politics, we need not search so far from home.

The Recovery of Modern Liberal Rationalism In its early formulations, modem liberal republicanism represents modem political philosophy in its most moderate, realistic, reasonable form. To correct the excesses of classical republicanism and of premodem political thought more generally, philosophers such as Locke, Hume, and Montesquieu, in collaboration with statesmen such as the authors of The Federalist, designed a new form of republic that would be extensive rather than confined to a small territory, com¬ mercial rather than martial, representative rather than participatory, inclined more toward democracy than toward aristocracy, and above all fundamentally rational¬ ist, deriving its jural principles primarily from common human reason rather than from an exclusionary civil or revealed theology.48 As the theoreticians and practi¬ tioners of a new political science, Locke and the other founders of modem liberal republicanism could surely consider themselves innovators, even if their innova¬ tion seems less profound than that effected by the philosophic founders of moder¬ nity itself. Yet despite their clear indebtedness to the work of their predecessors, the innovations of Locke and other early liberals cannot be judged to be simply secondary and subordinate to those of Machiavelli and the other originators of modem political philosophy. To bring the modem revolution to a successful completion in the founding of a stable modem republic, it was necessary for a second generation of modem political philosophers to temper, and in some re¬ spects to correct, the revolutionary enthusiasms of the first generation. It is perhaps the distinctive virtue of the members of this second generation to see, even amid the straggle against premodem forces whose outcome was by no means yet decided, that some of the principles of their early modem predecessors har¬ bored new forms of immoderation no less potentially destructive than the older forms inherent in the principles of their premodem adversaries. As this second generation of modem political philosophers contributed cru¬ cially to the founding of the modem liberal republic by tempering the revolu¬ tionary enthusiasms of its modern predecessors, so, I propose, it can provide useful guidance to today’s liberal perfectionists in their endeavor to formulate a corrective response to the similar enthusiasms that animate prominent contem¬ porary liberal theories. Among these second-generation modem liberal constitu¬ tionalists, Locke is especially worthy of careful reconsideration by virtue of the depth of his philosophic sensitivity to the difficulties and potential dangers associ¬ ated with both classical and modem forms of political rationalism. Although Locke’s ultimate sympathies certainly lie mainly with the modems, one may take

12

Chapter One

him nonetheless at his word when, in The Conduct of the Understanding, he declares: “There is no occasion to oppose the ancients and the moderns to one another or to be squeamish on either side. He that wisely conducts his mind in the pursuit of knowledge will gather what lights and get what helps he can from either of them, from whom they are best to be had, without adoring the errors or reject¬ ing the truths which he may find mingled in them” (24). And given that the modem rejection of teleological thinking stands as the single most formidable obstacle to the recovery of a perfectionist liberalism, a reexamination of Locke should prove particularly rewarding to those concerned with the condition of contemporary liberal theory. For amid an intellectual climate in which the right¬ ness of this critique is commonly presumed, the centrality of the teleological question and the sensitivity of Locke’s treatment of it do not commonly receive the attention they deserve from contemporary scholars. In the chapters that follow, I argue that, whereas Locke on the surface often appears alternately dogmatic and self-contradictory, beneath that surface (or considering it as a whole) one finds a remarkable theoretical subtlety and moder¬ ation. A seminal theorist of toleration with respect to religion and an apologist of reasonable Christianity, Locke is no dogmatically secular rationalist, but affirms the political and philosophical need for a partnership between reason and faith. A partisan of Baconian, technological rationality, Locke yet understands the partial¬ ity both of the technological conception of nature as a mere reservoir of powers and of the accompanying view of the rational life as nothing but a restless exercise in the acquisition of those powers. A forceful critic of premodem teleological theories, Locke affirms the broad plurality of human goods and insists that public life be governed by a deontological doctrine of personal rights or self-ownership. Yet in the awareness that the principles of personal autonomy and rights are groundless without a reasonable affirmation of the goodness of the life of reason itself, Locke subtly preserves a nonsubjective affirmation of reason as the distinc¬ tive human perfection, as a genuine constituent as well as an instrument of human happiness. In sum, understanding with unsurpassed clarity that the perfectionist principle is at once theoretically problematic, politically dangerous, and (in suitably moderated form) politically indispensable, Locke endeavors to show how that principle can be understood to support rather than to undermine the cause of rational liberty. Locke deserves our most careful attention, then, by virtue of the depth of his insight in confronting and working through the deepest theoretical and practical tensions in a constitutional form that remains our own. I shall shortly provide a somewhat more specific description of the substance of my reading and of the sequence of chapters in which I elaborate it. First, however, a word concerning my interpretive approach is in order. For although the foregoing general observations about Locke may appear innocuous enough to the nonspecialized reader, in recent decades the field of commentary on Locke has become—once again—a virtual minefield of controversy, and many specialists are sure to discover even in what I have said so far several contentious propositions. With a view, therefore, toward deactivating some of the explosives that lie under-

Introduction

13

foot and shielding myself against the rest, it is advisable for me briefly to survey this field, and to situate and defend my approach to the study of Locke.

On Reading Locke As a Political Philosopher and Political Rationalist The most basic, central claims of this study are also among the most specifically controversial. To repeat, I maintain that we can best and most usefully understand Locke’s political thought, first, in accordance with Locke’s grander intention, as a work of enduring philosophical significance, such that it maintains in its essen¬ tials a vital capacity to illuminate political discussion even in the late twentieth century; and second, as a substantive doctrine of political rationalism or moderate, rationalist liberalism. At present, one who wishes to advance these propositions must contend with at least two powerful opinions to the contrary. According to many of the most influential works of Locke interpretation over roughly the past forty years, Locke is either too far removed from us or, in the decisive respects, too close to assist us significantly in addressing the problems of contemporary liberalism. To state the opposition in the sharpest terms, one could say that ac¬ cording to the two prevailing schools of interpretation in the past few decades, Locke is either a seventeenth-century Christian thinker whose thought holds relevance only for seventeenth-century Christian societies, or a progenitor of the Enlightenment and of its subsequent self-deconstruction, and thus a surprisingly close relative of today’s antifoundationalists.49 The two general axes of this controversy, then, are (1) the relation of philos¬ ophy and history in the interpretation of Locke and of the classic authors of political thought in general; and (2) the relation of reason and faith as constituents of the specific basis and substance of Locke’s moral-political teaching. In the following remarks, I intend first to defend my position with respect to the contro¬ versy over interpretive approach, and second to clarify the concept of Locke’s political rationalism, which seems to me central to a proper understanding of the basis and substance of Locke’s political philosophy. In the course of this latter discussion, I shall also briefly situate my reading in relation to several recent studies that have attempted similarly to chart an alternative course.

Philosophy and History in the Interpretation of Locke In the early 1950s, Leo Strauss and C. B. MacPherson shattered a relative calm that had descended over the field, renewing a controversy that continues to divide Locke scholars. Rejecting the common view of Locke as a sincerely Chris¬ tian but theoretically muddled, late-medieval natural-law theorist, Strauss and MacPherson argued that Locke was instead a decisively modern natural-rights theorist, a Hobbesian egoist and protocapitalist materialist.50 Although highly controversial in its own right, MacPherson’s reading preserved some kinship with

14

Chapter One

more mainstream readings, in maintaining the sincerity of Locke’s professions of Christian devotion. The tension between traditional and modem strands of Locke’s thought simply reflected, in MacPherson’s view, the social tensions prominent in Locke’s seventeenth-century England. Strauss drew much heavier fire for arguing that Locke was a self-conscious modem political philosopher and a practitioner of the political philosopher’s art of esoteric writing. Locke’s theological professions do not indicate the true basis of his moral-political thought, in the Straussian view, but instead function as a rhetorical shield against the persecution of heterodox opinions and as a pedagogical instrument for the persuasion of the nonphilosophic majority in Locke’s audience. In the 1960s, what is probably today the most populous school of Locke interpretation began to form, emerging largely in reaction to the Strauss and MacPherson readings. Peter Laslett’s “Introduction” to his edition of the Two Treatises contains the seeds of this reaction, which emerges in full bloom with the publication of John Dunn’s comprehensive study of Locke’s political thought. In turn, Dunn’s study was followed, and in some respects refined and reinforced, by subsequent studies by Richard Ashcraft, James Tully, and (with a broader focus) Richard Tuck, among others.51 Whatever their specific disagreements with one another on Locke’s meaning, the members of this school are united in their fundamental rejection of MacPherson’s, and especially Strauss’s, readings. Those readings err, in the revisionist view, in dismissing or failing to assign sufficient weight to an abundance of evidence, in both Locke’s published texts and his private writings, attesting the sincerity and depth of Locke’s religious convictions. What is distinctive in this later revision, however, is less its restoration (with some significant innovations) of the more traditional view of Locke’s Christian political morality, than its attempt to establish one or another neo-traditionalist reading on the basis of a relatively novel, sophisticated methodology. Employing an approach to the interpretation of texts developed by Dunn, J. G. A. Pocock, and most elaborately in a series of articles by Quentin Skinner,52 the members of what I shall call the “Cambridge school”53 object fundamentally to what they regard as the unhistorical character of MacPherson’s and Strauss’s readings. Animated respectively, these critics allege, by neo-Marxist and conser¬ vative concerns about the evils of liberalism and modernity, MacPherson and Strauss impose these twentieth-century concerns upon their readings of Locke. The result, in Dunn’s evocative phrasing, is a rendering of Locke as “a lifeless but sinister effigy fit to adorn a crude morality play.”54 In its fundamentals, the Cambridge interpretive approach represents an attempt to overcome such biases, striving above all for historical fidelity. In the interpretation of particular texts, the proper aim is the recovery of the author’s own self-understanding. It is therefore an error to suppose that the meaning of a text is determined simply by the social context within which it was produced. But it is equally an error to attempt to recover a text’s meaning by reference to the text alone, abstracted from any contextual relation. So far as writing constitutes a communicative act, its very possibility depends upon the sharing of a set of meanings or linguistic conventions

Introduction

15

by an author and his or her intended audience. The recovery of a given author’s meaning or self-understanding is therefore inseparable from the recovery of his or her understanding of the historical context of linguistic conventions within which the intended communication can occur. From this “linguistic contextualist” perspective, the primary methodological shortcoming of MacPherson’s and other Marxist or neo-Marxist readings lies in their assumption of the primacy of mate¬ rial causes or interests, as opposed to conscious authorial intentions, in determin¬ ing an author’s meaning. The methodological failing of the Straussian readings, on the other hand, lies in their allegedly thoroughgoing abstraction from historical context. This abstraction proceeds from the opinion that the most gifted and ambitious authors address issues of permanent human significance and intend their communications to reach distant as well as immediately present or proximate audiences. Its potential licentiousness is magnified by the characteristically Straus¬ sian view of most such authors as practitioners of esoteric writing. In the chapters that follow, it will become clear that my reading of Locke owes much to the Straussian interpretive approach. To readers sympathetic to the Cambridge school, therefore, my reading will likely appear on its face to be methodologically unsound. To such readers, my reading of Locke as a political philosopher, distinct from other classes of political thinkers bound by more local or ephemeral concerns, and as the architect of a coherent doctrine of political rationalism that contemporary theorists might consider a form of perfectionist liberalism, will likely appear to exemplify a few of the major “mythologies” from which Skinner and others have labored to liberate the science of historical inter¬ pretation.55 To blunt the partisan edge that has often marred the debate between the adherents of these alternative approaches, I might first observe that, although I expect Straussian readers to find generally unobjectionable the interpretive principles that I employ, few or none of those principles is an exclusive property of the Straussian school. Further, it is important to understand that however deep may be the disagreement between the Straussian and Cambridge schools, the precise nature of that disagreement is often misconceived, with the unfortunate effect of obscuring an important, potentially fruitful area of mutual agreement.56 The disagreement between the two schools cannot be understood in terms of an opposition between a fundamentally historical and a fundamentally ahistorical interpretive approach.57 Both approaches are primarily historical in intention. Both aim at the recovery of authors’ self-understandings, and both reject the extremes of contextualist reductionism and textualist abstraction. The real disagreement can be stated, first in relatively superficial terms, as a disagreement concerning how to identify the relevant historical context or contexts within which a given text can be understood. In their concern to maintain the self-discipline proper to a scholarly inquiry, adherents of the Cambridge approach tend to insist upon relatively narrow placements, locating the meanings of texts within the immediate or proximate historical-linguistic contexts within which they were produced. Adherents of the Straussian approach, on the other hand, along with many non-Straussians, insist upon an openness to the possibility that at least some texts carry genuinely philo-

16

Chapter One

sophic significance, transcending the proximate circumstances of their production. The implication of this approach is not to deny the propriety of considering the significance of texts within their local historical contexts, but only to propose that the most profound texts, in accordance with the intentions of the most gifted and ambitious authors, may carry quite broad significance, perhaps even for human¬ kind as such, in addition to their local and immediate significance. That I propose quite broad contextualizations of Locke’s thought does not mean necessarily that I find the specific, narrower contextualizations proposed by adherents of the Cam¬ bridge approach to be false or uninteresting. To the contrary, they are often illuminating and sometimes indispensable for a full understanding of Locke. In themselves, however, they are incomplete. Stated in these terms, the disagreement is not so deep as to render impossible the peaceful coexistence or even cooperation of the two interpretive schools, whose relations have oscillated for decades between angry denunciations and obstinate silences. There is no reason to deny the possibility of examining a given author’s near-term intention while acknowledging in principle the legitimacy of a longer-term focus, and vice versa. Indeed to acknowledge the legitimacy of an alternative contextual focus is to gain at least one useful means for testing the soundness of one’s own reading.58 One might find puzzling, therefore, the insis¬ tence of prominent representatives of the Cambridge school upon narrowing the boundaries of permissible contextual interpretation.59 The primary historical aim of recovering authorial intention cannot justify this insistence. That justification requires the interposition of an additional interpretive principle. Skinner’s state¬ ment of this principle is worth quoting at length: Any statement ... is inescapably the embodiment of a particular intention, on a particular occasion, addressed to the solution of a particular problem, and thus specific to its situation in a way that it can only be naive to try to transcend. The vital implication here is not merely that the classic texts cannot be concerned with our questions and answers, but only with their own. There is also the further implication that . . . there simply are no perennial problems in philosophy: there are only individual answers to individual questions, with as many different answers as there are questions, and as many different questions as there are questioners. There is in consequence simply no hope of seeking the point of studying the history of ideas in the attempt to learn directly from the classic authors by focusing on their attempted answers to supposedly timeless questions.60

Straussian and other philosophically oriented readers are less interested in the particular occasioning circumstances of thoughts than in the thoughts themselves. They proceed from the premise that for thinkers of the highest rank, the contro¬ versies of particular communities may be fully comprehensible only as instances of the fundamental, enduring controversies of political life as such. By contrast, for adherents of the Cambridge approach in its seminal forms, the attempt to broaden the interpretive context, to move from the particular and ephemeral to the universal and permanent, is fundamentally wrongheaded, for the simple reason

Introduction

17

that there is no broader, truly philosophical context. In this view, there is only the local, the particular, the ephemeral. Underlying the Skinnerian focus on the immediate to the exclusion of possible broader interpretive contexts is a deep commitment to a conventionalist or antiessentialist epistemology.61 In rejecting such a commitment, I make no claim, of course, to demonstrate the existence of natural kinds, nor do I simply suppose their existence. Neither do I simply sup¬ pose or claim to demonstrate conclusively the existence of questions that are permanent or coeval with political life. What is pertinent is the fact that neither Skinner nor anyone else has proved their nonexistence. At issue here is only whether it is wiser for us as interpreters of old texts, lacking a conclusive answer to the question of the possibility of truly philosophic discourse, to rule out that possibility a priori or to remain open to it. To approach texts in a spirit of open¬ ness to this possibility appears to me the wiser course, first in view of its plausibil¬ ity as a hypothesis, and second because the possibility of the faithful historical interpretation to which both Skinnerians and Straussians aspire itself depends upon the possibility of truly philosophic discourse. It seems to me a perfectly plausible and reasonable interpretive hypothesis, supported by an impressive amount of empirical evidence, that exceedingly thoughtful individuals in very widely disparate historical and political contexts have seriously explored the questions of deepest concern to our own political community as well as others. These include, first and foremost, the question that animates political philosophy at its Socratic beginning and that finds more familiar expression in the introduction to The Federalist'. Are human societies capable of establishing good government by “reflection and choice,” or instead forever destined to depend for our political constitutions upon “accident and force” and, one might add, poetic myth, positive revelation, or mere superstition? They include more specifically the questions whether political life is decisively natural or conventional; whether there are natural, transconventional principles of justice whereby human beings can reasonably be said to possess any natural rights or duties; whether there is a naturally best or right way of life or mode of communal organization; and the like. Further, it seems to me no less plausible and reasonable to grant the possibility that the most thoughtful of such questioners, however temporally and culturally remote from us, may have proposed answers to such questions from which we can learn. It bears emphasizing that what I am proposing is not a replacement of one a priori, inflexible interpretive principle by another. I propose that we approach texts not by insisting dogmatically upon the necessity of their systematic coherence or relevance for us, but instead, especially with respect to authors of manifest philosophic ambition and renown, by taking their coherence and relevance as hypotheses—rebuttable, like any other hypothesis, by the evidence in the particular case. To suppose that all politics is local may gain a professional politician credit for a commonsense, pragmatic realism, but it is not a sound basis for interpreting works of political philosophy. Not only is the Skinnerians’ insistent localism not required by their fundamental interpretive aim, it is ultimately incompatible with

18

Chapter One

it, in two important respects. First, it imposes an unwarranted degree of closure upon at least some communities of political discourse, and it arbitrarily lowers the vision and diminishes the stature of the most farsighted thinkers. Intended to quarantine political philosophy’s past from its present, it accomplishes the oppo¬ site. It encourages interpreters to disregard or trivialize the claims of ambitious authors to effect profound theoretical innovations, to converse with writers long dead, and to enlighten distant audiences. The most important cost of this severely confining estimation of the power of reason is the renunciation of our highest responsibility as students of political philosophy and even as citizens: to examine the rational basis and defensibility, not merely the rhetorical effectiveness, of our own and others’ conceptions of justice and the public good—to take seriously the claims of various regimes or constitutional forms as arguments.62 But the cost to the cause of scholarship more narrowly conceived is hardly more bearable. For the effect of detaching the present practice of political philosophy from its own history63 is not only to deprive the present of the wisdom of the past but also to render the present incapable of fully understanding the past, in its vital philosophic dimension. In a response to critics, Skinner maintains that his interpretive approach entails no denial of the possibility of theoretical creativity or innovation, but to the contrary renders such innovation intelligible by describing the conventional context from which a given theory distinguishes itself. But his concession to innovation is severely circumscribed. In his preoccupation with texts’ near-term, ideological significance, Skinner displays virtually no interest in the distinction between ideas that can be effective in a given political or theological context and ideas that can be thought. Indeed, persisting in his denial of the existence of enduring, transhistorical questions, Skinner persists in believing that sound histori¬ cal research enables the interpreter to identify in principle which thoughts can or cannot be thought by any thinker in a given context.64 His approach forecloses any serious reflection upon how certain thinkers come to be innovators and upon how far those innovations sometimes reach. It is ironic and unfortunate that by acting (self-consciously or not) as Machiavelli’s heir in the reduction of ideas to their “effectual truth,” Skinner deprives himself of the capacity to appreciate the innovative greatness of Machiavelli himself and of thinkers of similar rank.65 In this way, by failing to take seriously this most important aspect of certain authors’ self-understandings, the practitioners of a narrow contextualism fail to do justice to their own historical intention. This points to a still deeper difficulty. Given his conventionalist premise, the achievement of fidelity in historical inter¬ pretation must signify for Skinner the preservation or recovery of the natural particularity—the ultimate alienness, in relation to ourselves—of the phenomena under study. Proper historical science therefore requires a form of intellectual asceticism, a repression of the desire to generalize or to assimilate thoughts or experiences rooted in different historical circumstances. In the practice of this discipline, the historian resists especially the temptation to impose the conventions of his own historical context upon another. Skinner seems compelled to suppose

Introduction

19

that by this self-restraint, the historian effectively liberates his mind from the conventions constitutive of his own historical context. The difficulty is that on Skinner’s own conventionalist premise, this liberating self-discipline is not possi¬ ble. If all thoughts are particular, intelligible only within unique historical-linguis¬ tic contexts, then all interpretive principles are particular and only locally intelligi¬ ble. The premise of the particularity of all thoughts and all things, whereby Skinner would liberate himself from his own historical conventions, proves to be less a key than a lock. It must itself be understood as a conventional construct characteristic of a particular context, and therefore (to alter the metaphor) as a distorting, not a clarifying lens through which to view thinkers and actors of other historical contexts. So far as it signifies a denial of the power of any human mind to think beyond its proximate linguistic context, the Skinnerian principle of inter¬ pretive localism consistently observed not only would negate the very possibility of political philosophy proper, but it would also negate the possibility of an unbiased interpretation of old or foreign texts. So far as they seek to recover the true authorial intentions or self-understandings animating such texts, therefore, the Cambridge historiographers are forced to assume for themselves, quite reason¬ ably, a privilege that they unreasonably deny to the authors whom they study. I submit that their admirably modest and sensible scholarly admonition against recasting previous thinkers in our own image would be more perfectly observed through a more consistent acknowledgment that some of those thinkers may have wielded theoretical powers equal to or greater than our own.66 The particular case of Locke well exemplifies the need for a flexible and expansive identification of the contexts relevant to certain texts. For whatever the complications introduced by Locke’s own penetrating critique of the premodem doctrine of natural kinds, it is quite clear that Locke does not employ the principle of interpretive localism in his own understanding of the significance of his works, and therefore that a proper forbearance on the part of the historical interpreter requires an openness to the possibility of more expansive contextualizations. Approaching him first and foremost through a consideration of his own self¬ understanding, one becomes quickly aware of the possibility that in Locke we confront a most unusual, radical, and challenging author, a worthy teacher and conversation partner for remote generations of students and thinkers. It is evident, first, that Locke considers himself an innovator in very profound respects. In “The Epistle to the Reader” of his most philosophically ambitious work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke acknowledges that some of his notions are “new . . . to me,” and ventures a considerably understated suspicion that they will likewise appear “out of the ordinary Road” to others. This “Epistle” also contains, of course, Locke’s famously modest presentation of himself as an “Under-Labourer” to the great “Master-Builders” of the new sciences, a mere “Scholar” who writes not “for the Information of Men of large Thoughts and quick Apprehensions,” but only “to Men of my own size.”67 Re¬ flecting upon this statement and upon the rest of his epistle, one might discover that even amid his self-effacing rhetoric Locke betrays a substantial ambition, in

20

Chapter One

his intention to disencumber “the Endeavours of ingenious and industrious Men” by instructing them in the proper conception of science.68 But Locke is not always so guarded with respect to the true scope of his innovative ambition. As virtually all students of the Essay agree, Locke directs much of his polemi¬ cal fire toward the Scholastic conceptions of logic and science, still predominant (in Locke’s telling) in academic curricula at the time he was writing it. In Locke’s view, however, what is ultimately at stake in this contest is far more than the overturning of a locally pernicious set of conventions. At the outset of The Con¬ duct of the Understanding, his later supplement to the Essay, Locke decries the fundamental inadequacy of the rules of logic “that have served the learned world these two or three thousand years,” and endorses the Baconian project of replacing them (1). Although this statement implies that “the great Lord Verulam” is a still greater innovator than Locke himself, what is more significant at present is the implication that Locke harbors very high philosophic ambitions for his work in its own right. To express an intention to overthrow a system of logic in settled usage for two or three thousand years is to present oneself clearly as a hunter of very large and powerful philosophical game. Advertising his work as continuing and perhaps perfecting Bacon’s work, Locke indicates an intention at least to contrib¬ ute substantially to a still-nascent project that Bacon himself proclaimed, with the remarkable audacity expressed even by the titles of his theoretical works, as literally epoch-making.69 There appears to be a studied ambiguity in Locke’s professed intention to write for “Men of my own size.” Writing as a mere scholar in relation to others’ more substantive contributions to natural science, Locke nonetheless writes as a philoso¬ pher for philosophers in exploring the scope and limits of the mind’s capacity for science, and especially in elaborating his more comprehensive understanding of the human, moral and political, significance of the modem scientific enterprise. That Locke means to innovate in the practical, political sphere as well as the theoretical appears in part in the fact, noticed by Skinner and explored in its local contextual significance in great detail by Ashcraft,70 that he appeals to natural law rather than constitutional tradition to justify the events of 1688. More strikingly, in a letter to Richard King dated August 25, 1703, Locke plainly regards his Two Treatises of Government as a work of enduring significance, placing it alongside Aristotle’s Politics among the classic texts of political philosophy.71 Furthermore, Locke sees the general significance of his moral and political writing less as a continuation than as an elaboration of a viable alternative to much of the premodem tradition. As an agent of moral and political as well as theoreti¬ cal reform, Locke targets as his profound adversaries “the Philosophers of old,” who vainly inquired “whether Summum bonum consisted in Riches, or bodily Delights, or Virtue, or Contemplation” (ECHU 2.21.55). A failure to consider the full ramifications of his critique of classical teleological science along with his theological heterodoxy leads some prominent scholars to continue erroneously to place Locke within a late-medieval, Thomist or Christian-Aristotelian tradition of political morality.72 Although Locke endeavors, as we shall see, to leave intact an

Introduction

21

alternative understanding of rational perfection in which he grounds his own moral-political principles, his ambitious critique of premodem teleology is the crucial point at which his practical and theoretical innovations converge. Having thus summarized the main difficulties in what stands at present as the major alternative, I can state in more positive terms the essentials of my own interpretive approach to Locke. Like the adherents of both the Straussian and Cambridge approaches, I take as my primary purpose the recovery of Locke’s intentions or self-understanding as an author. By comparison with the latter, however, I pay much less detailed attention to the relation of Locke’s thought to the local ideological climates within which it was produced. For the reasons I have stated, I believe it justified and useful to view Locke’s political thought, and to weigh its merits and demerits, mainly in the two broader, overlapping contexts of modern political philosophy and liberal political theory. Having said this, however, I must add that I do not read Locke’s works as purely philosophical arguments. I do not proceed, as one recent characterization of the analytic school puts it, by effectively sterilizing Locke’s texts against infection by their local contexts and then “performing analytic operations” on them.73 Rather, I begin with the hypothesis that Locke is a political philoso¬ pher—-that although at least some of his texts may be taken to be also “philosophi¬ cal” discourses in the precise sense, all of them are in some respects “civil” discourses.74 Although I find improperly confining Skinner’s insistence on contex¬ tual limitations on what great thinkers can think, I find indispensable his sugges¬ tion concerning the contextual limitations on what political actors, including great thinkers, can unambiguously say.15 Locke explicitly affirms the application of this principle to his own writings. He acknowledges that he tailors his presentation to suit the pedagogical needs of various sorts of readers,76 and observes still more suggestively that “Philosophy . . . when it appears in publick, must have so much Complacency, as to be cloathed in the ordinary Fashion and Language of the country, so far as it can consist with Truth and Perspicuity” (ECHU 2.21.20). To recover the philosophical center of Locke’s political arguments, therefore, we must bear in mind the civil contexts in which he presents them. As I shall argue in the following chapter, this means above all that we must bear in mind the contextual constraints upon Locke’s presentation of his arguments concerning the acutely sensitive relation of reason and (Christian) faith. Finally, I might add that in attempting to take'seriously Locke’s political thought as an argument that twentieth-century readers may yet find vital and instructive, I try to remain mindful of the danger of dogmatically imposing theo¬ retical coherence upon my subject.771 proceed from the premise of the coherence and depth of Locke’s argument, treating that premise not as an incontestable dogma but rather as a rebuttable hypothesis. I try to accord proper—and thus substantial—weight to Locke’s own assessment of the uniformity and consistency of his philosophical edifice (ECHU 1.4.25), among other, more particular pieces of evidence. On this important point I subscribe fully to the reasoning of Nathan Tarcov: “If ... we hope to learn something from Locke, then the verdict of

22

Chapter One

confusion ought to be only our last resort and we had better explore other avenues of interpretation.”78

On the Basis and Substance of Locke’s Political Philosophy Unsurprisingly, scholarly debates over the substance of Locke’s political thought have tended, with some recent exceptions, to produce alignments similar to those concerning the proper interpretive approach to Locke’s writings. Yet, whereas my interpretive approach reflects a fundamental sympathy to the Straussian as opposed to the Cambridge school, my reading of the substance of Locke’s political thought diverges in important respects from those characteristic of both major schools. And although the full justification for this reading can emerge only in the chapters that follow, to enable the reader more easily to follow my elaboration of the evidence and reasoning supporting my substantive conclu¬ sions, it may be helpful here for me briefly to situate my reading in relation to the major alternatives, and in particular to clarify the distinctiveness of the concept of political rationalism that seems to me central to a proper understanding of the basis and substance of Locke’s political philosophy. By placing the concept of political rationalism at the center of my reading, I mean first to distinguish Locke’s project from one grounded wholly or necessarily in religious faith. I shall argue both that Locke maintains consistently that the ground or justification for his political principles is discoverable by reason, and that he attempts to promote the life of reason or rational liberty, whether within or without the life of faith, as the condition and purpose of a healthy politics. This argument stands in contrast to those of numerous scholars, Dunn and Ashcraft most notably, who argue in different ways that in the end, Locke appeals to the Christian faith as the sole, solid foundation of his moral and political beliefs. For reasons to be explained more elaborately in the following chapter, I hold that such scholars greatly overstate the case in interpreting Locke’s copious public and private professions of faith as an obvious, massive, overwhelming confirmation of the sincerity of his Christianity.79 The presence of certain remarkable anomalies in both published and unpublished writings at minimum supports a more modest acknowledgment that the relation between reason and faith in Locke’s deepest understanding remains quite complicated and difficult. But I firmly reject the contention that Locke is moved to seek refuge in the Christian revelation upon concluding that his rationalist project was a failure. I wish to make clear that in emphasizing the primacy of Locke’s political rationalism in relation to his appeals to faith, I intend specifically to contest the attribution to Locke of a simple, holistic theocentrism that would effectively exclude him from contemporary, religiously pluralistic societies’ debates over constitutional fundamentals.80 This argument does not necessarily entail a denial of the sincerity of Locke’s Christian professions. The measure of indignant zeal that some display in defense of Locke’s sincerity in this respect is understandable, if not ultimately justified, as a reaction against certain Straussian insinuations of

Introduction

23

Locke’s nonbelief.81 Although Strauss and Thomas Pangle take care to point out that their arguments do not strictly require this conclusion, their argument for Locke’s esoteric egoism would certainly fit comfortably with an inference of Locke’s theological agnosticism or outright atheism. Moreover, whereas Strauss himself employs characteristically sober, disciplined rhetoric in conveying his conception of Locke as a radical innovator, Pangle permits himself at times to describe Locke in terms suggestive of Goethe’s Mephistopheles. Pangle’s prudent denial that Locke’s elevation of reason requires “the jettisoning of the Bible” stands in some tension, to say the least, with his references to Locke’s “attempted refutation of the biblical faith on its own terms,” his “assault on the biblical conception,” and his “delicious . . . benevolent blasphemy.”82 Without imputing to Locke a doctrine of radical secularism or atheism, I propose simply that we strive to appreciate the independent power and weight of his rationalist arguments. To those who find Locke’s rhetoric suspicious, one can say provisionally that the heterodox character of Locke’s Christianity could suffice in itself to explain much of the indirectness, ambiguity, and even evasiveness that characterize many of his public and prospectively public statements. It is of the essence of Locke’s heterodox—most likely Socinian83—Christianity to accommodate his frequent appeals to unassisted reason. Locke clearly attempts to justify his doctrine to the large portion of believers in his audience by showing the conformity of his politi¬ cal principles with the Christian faith, properly understood.84 No less clearly, however, alongside these attempts Locke insists upon the availability of justifica¬ tions grounded in unassisted reason. Notwithstanding the argument of the Letter Concerning Toleration, he even designs certain arguments to appeal to genuine nonbelievers.85 Mindful of the complexity of both his intention and the rhetoric through which he discloses and seeks to enact it, therefore, we should beware of allowing an available recourse to Locke’s Christianity to relax our efforts to uncover the coherence and depth of Locke’s rationalism.86 Whatever the mode of persuasion he believed necessary or most useful for appealing to the faithful in his audience, in the chapters that follow I shall attempt to uncover the reasoning whereby the philosopher Locke justifies those political principles to himself as a philosopher, and attempts to justify them to all rational readers as such. Herein lies the preeminent virtue of the Straussian readings of Locke. The easy ascription to Locke of some variant of seventeenth-century Christian faith appears commonly in conjunction with the opinion that Locke is a shallow or confused thinker—as in Dunn’s characterization of Locke, for instance, as a “profoundly and exotically incoherent” thinker whose thought can appear intelligible and plausible only in the light of a series of ultimately inscrutible “theological commit¬ ments.”87 Yet virtually all students of Locke agree upon Locke’s extraordinary caution; and it would seem that the opinion that Locke was both a confused and an extraordinarily cautious man should raise the eyebrows of impartial students.88 Reluctant to ascribe to Locke errors and inconsistencies “so obvious that they cannot have escaped the notice of a man of his rank and his sobriety,”89 Strauss and his students discover instead a subtle, philosophically formidable Locke.

24

Chapter One

Behind Locke’s frequent appearance as a benign but thoroughly muddled tradition¬ alist lies in fact a meticulous writer and a relentlessly probing questioner, a man utterly disdainful of unthinking submission to intellectual custom or fashion. Still, even those sympathetic to this approach may question whether the Straussian readings have completely succeeded in recovering Locke’s political and philosophic intentions. For it appears that, by situating Locke in a progression (or regression) of modem political philosophers whose thinking culminates in a theoretical crisis, Strauss’s reading discredits relatively implausible allegations of inconsistency, only to replace them with a more plausible allegation of inconsis¬ tencies and other vices of which a man of Locke’s rank could be capable. Even more to the point, one may question whether, whatever the particular shortcom¬ ings of their arguments, the Cambridge commentators and others are more satis¬ factory than at least the original Straussian reading in their emphasis on the moral dimension of Locke’s thought. In the sometimes indignant opposition to this reading there is an element of justice, in the concern that despite its philosophic sophistication and even beneficence, the original Straussian reading restores respect for Locke’s enduring relevance and power at the cost of obscuring his moral design, especially by associating Locke’s thought with the morally debilitat¬ ing reductionism and conventionalism for which Hobbes was “justly decried.”90 A proper appreciation of Locke’s intellectual stature need not exact such a cost. By emphasizing the concept of political rationalism, I mean to distinguish Locke’s project not only from those grounded in religious faith or the suprarational, but also from those constructed upon subrational foundations. Locke is no more a radically modem reductionist than he is a Christian fideist. Although Locke clearly places his own thought in the context of the modem, BaconianCartesian revolution in science and more subtly indicates his fundamental sympa¬ thy for the Machiavellian, realist, or anti teleological revolution in morality and politics, he endeavors to advance the modem agenda not least by moderating its own peculiar enthusiasms. Intending above all to promote the life of rational liberty, Locke sees more clearly than most of his colleagues in the class of early modern political philosophers that that aim is not well served by a purportedly realist, sophisticated reduction of reason or science to the status of a mere instru¬ mentality, available for service to the most powerful passions. In this vital respect, the modem thinker whose work best illuminates Locke’s own is not Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes, or even Bacon,91 but instead Montaigne, with whom Locke shares an understanding not only of the danger but also of the necessity and propriety of conceiving of the rational life as a perfection—an end as well as a means, an indispensable constituent as well as an instrument of human happiness.92 This effort to establish the independence of rationality in Locke’s political thought requires some qualification, however. This requirement points to the third, final aspect of the significance of the concept of Locke’s political rational¬ ism. To repeat, to deny that Locke’s political thought is grounded in either the suprarational or the subrational is not to ascribe to Locke the opinion that reason alone is capable of governing political societies, independent of any external

Introduction

25

supports. Although Locke certainly harbors a progressive hopefulness concerning the prospects for rational self-government, the concept of Locke’s political ratio¬ nalism is also to be understood to convey his appreciation of the inherently prob¬ lematic relation of reason to political life, and thus of the need for reason to moderate its claims in order to preserve its power to govern.93 Notwithstanding his exaggerated suggestion that morality, and therewith the jural principles of politics, may be classified among the demonstrative or theoret¬ ical sciences, Locke does not attempt to subject political life to the direct rule of pure reason. He would govern political life not by reason simply, but rather by a reason adjusted to meet the needs of political life: reason or “wisdom in the popular acceptation” (STCE 140). Thus adjusted or popularized, reason may govern us most effectively, Locke suggests, by enlisting passion and will in its service, and above all by calling attention to the reasonableness of the prevailing religious faith. Viewed in its broadest significance, the delicate task of Locke’s political philosophy is to supply a properly political defense of the rational life, securing the indispensable condition of government by the rational consent of the governed by promoting the broad promulgation of this moderated, popularized reason, while yet preserving the dignifying status of reason as an end in itself. Thus affirming its continuing philosophic relevance while challenging its depiction as a more respectably attired, still morally corrosive modem conven¬ tionalism, my reading resembles in its fundamental intention several recent at¬ tempts to chart an alternative course in the study of Locke’s political thought. In the past decade or so, thoughtful studies by Nathan Tarcov, Ruth Grant, Andrzej Rapaczynski, Peter Schouls, John Simmons, Michael Zuckert, and Jerome Huyler have appeared, arguing in various ways for the enduring power and relevance, both philosophical and moral, of Locke’s vision of political life.94 It is unnecessary for the purposes of this introduction for me to present a critical review of these studies, from which I have learned much. My disagreements with them on specific points of interpretation will emerge as I elaborate my argument in the chapters that follow. Let it suffice for me here to indicate the main areas in which I believe the distinctiveness of my own study appears. Like many others, I am centrally concerned with what Tarcov has called “the vexed question” of the basis of Locke’s political morality.95 Much of the distinc¬ tiveness of my own approach, however, derives from the degree and kind of attention I devote to the allegation of Locke’s philosophical conventionalism. As I have said, I ultimately reject this charge; yet due to its grounding in the difficult matter of Locke’s critique of premodem teleological interpretations of nature, I find it a more plausible and philosophically tenacious objection than do many contemporary Locke scholars.96 For this reason, and in view of its enormous significance for the question of the theoretical viability of a perfectionist liberal¬ ism, I consider it at length. This concern accounts in large measure for my ex¬ tended discussion, somewhat unusual in studies of Locke’s moral and political thought, of Locke’s epistemology and especially of his account of natural science.

26

Chapter One

My discussions of the Lockean concepts of the state of nature and human happiness constitute related departures. I argue, first, that the state of nature in Locke is neither Biblically rooted nor a mere heuristic contrivance, but rather represents an application of Locke’s natural-scientific or natural-historical ap¬ proach to the study of human nature. Second, I argue that there is more to Locke’s account of happiness than bourgeois acquisitiveness or foresighted, self-disciplined striving, that Locke conceives of the rational life as an end as well as a means, or as the functional substitute for the summum bonum that his nonteleological natural science has discredited. On both these points, in addition, my study is somewhat distinctive in the emphasis it places on the close relation between Locke’s thought and that of Montaigne, perhaps helping to repair by this association Locke’s exaggerated reputation as a teacher of an emotionally austere egoism. Finally, my understanding of the natural or empirical ground of Locke’s political morality leads to a consideration of Locke’s thoughts concerning the cultural and political conditions most favorable to the cultivation of an ethic of rational self-govern¬ ment. Although others have produced illuminating studies of the educational regime that Locke designs specifically for children, a further discussion of the pedagogical design of the Lockean political constitution broadly conceived should help complete the picture.

The Order of the Argument I develop my argument in the following sequence of chapters. In chapter two, proceeding from Locke’s own suggestions, I identify specifically what sort of rationalism Locke promises his readers. In major works, Locke suggests variously that his political thought is grounded in a self-evident truth, in the (rationally verifiable) Biblical revelation, in natural theology, and in a nonempirical, purely deductive system of morality. I argue that a careful assessment of these alterna¬ tives forces us ultimately to explore the basis of Locke’s political thought in his empirically acquired understanding of human nature. In the third chapter, I consider Locke’s critical account of natural science, in particular with a view toward determining the implications of that critique for the possibility of knowledge of the nature and natural condition of humankind. The aim here is to describe the empirical, natural-historical approach whereby Locke substantiates his conception of the state of nature. Chapter four concerns the state of nature itself, focusing on the historical basis of Locke’s understanding of the naturally problematic status of human rationality and human receptiveness to law. 1 aim to make clear in this context that the central problem for Locke’s political philosophy consists in the struggle for moral and political rationality—the struggle to achieve a sober, clear-sighted awareness of the essential truth of the human condition in its promise and in its limits, and to govern ourselves in accordance with that awareness. Upon gaining from this chapter an adequate understanding of the essential problem, especially of its mental dimension, we shall be in a

Introduction

27

position to see how Locke’s conception of the problem of the state of nature shapes and limits the theoretical and the rhetorical aspects of his response to it. Chapter five describes Locke’s account of individual agency. This chapter represents in an important respect the summit of the argument. In it I reconstruct, within the limits imposed by Locke’s rhetorical reserve, Locke’s conception of the rational pursuit of happiness and the exercise of rational liberty wherein we perfect our claim to dignity, rights, and self-government. Having thus completed the ascent to the nature of the fully rational life as Locke conceives of it, I descend in chapter six to political life, to consider his account of the constitutional and cultural conditions that sustain and promote the rational life in both its popular and its more exclusive incarnations. More specifically, I explore Locke’s doctrine of property and his accounts of reasonable Christianity, the family, governmental institutions, and the enterprise of modem science, as they contribute to his delicate attempt to manage and refine the inevitable partisanship that characterizes political life. Finally, in chapter seven I present some concluding reflections on the lessons that we—contemporary liberals and late modems—can draw from Locke’s teach¬ ing.

Notes 1. The Federalist #1. 2. E.g., Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984). See also Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cam¬ bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), and “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self,” Political Theory 12 (1984): 81-96. 3. See William Galston, Liberal Purposes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); Stephen Salkever, ‘“Lopp’d and Bound’: How Liberal Theory Obscured the Goods of Liberal Practices,” in Liberalism and the Good, eds. R. Bruce Douglass, Gerald R. Mora, and Henry S. Richardson (London: Routledge, 1990), and Finding the Mean (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990); J. Budziszewski, True Tolerance (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1992); Stephen Macedo, Liberal Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). Also worth notice is Steven Kautz’s thoughtful defense of the virtues of liberalism in Liberalism and Community (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995). 4. See Galston, Liberal Purposes, 21, 173-76; Macedo, Liberal Virtues, 9, 39-40; Salkever, “'Lopp’d and Bound,’” 168. 5. Macedo, Liberal Virtues, 39-77; Salkever, “‘Lopp’d and Bound,”’ 188-95. 6. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). Other variants of liberal neutralism appear in Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Cam¬ bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974); Bruce Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980); and Charles Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). I am inclined to include Ronald Dworkin in this listing. See especially Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), xv, 273; also “Neutrality, Equality, and Liberalism,” in Liberalism Reconsidered, eds. Douglas MacLean and Claudia Mills (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allenheld, 1983), 1-11; and A Matter of Principle (Cam-

28

Chapter One

bridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 181-213. For more detailed distinctions among the various strands of liberal neutralism, see Raz, The Morality of Freedom, 11033; Galston, Liberal Purposes, 79-117; and Rawls, Political Liberalism, 191-93. 7. In the most common variant of neutralist doctrine, the results of governmental actions may or may not be substantively neutral, but government may not justify any action by reference to the intrinsic superiority of any particular, controversial conception of happiness or the good. See Rawls, Theory, 12, 17-20, and Political Liberalism, xv-xix, 24ff., 59ff.; Ackerman, Social Justice, 3-30; Larmore, Patterns, 40-68. 8. Rawls, Theory, 325-32, also 553-54. 9. Rawls, Theory of Justice, 14, 142ff. 10. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 4-5. A conventionalist social science places us “in the position of beings who are sane and sober when engaged in trivial business and who gamble like madmen when confronted with serious issues—retail sanity and wholesale madness. If our principles have no other support than our blind preferences, everything a man is willing to dare will be permissible. The contemporary rejection of natural right leads to nihilism—nay, it is identical with nihilism.” 11. Rawls, Theory of Justice, 432-33. 12. On the two generations of neutralism, see Patrick Neal, “Vulgar Liberalism,” Political Theory 21, no. 4 (1993): 625-29. 13. Rawls, Theory of Justice, 560. 14. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., The Spirit of Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 90-92. 15. See 557a-558c. 16. In A Theory of Justice, the promise of inclusiveness depends upon the existence of a class of “primary” goods, which Rawls conceives of as all-purpose goods, “things that every rational man is presumed to want” or that “normally have a use whatever a person’s rational plan of life.” By confining its activities to the just distribution of primary goods, a liberal government can accommodate all minimally reasonable conceptions of the good or happy life, and thus can negate any legitimate cause for partisan divisions in political society (62; cf. 92). Cf. Ackerman, Social Justice, 31, 348. 17. Raz, Morality of Freedom, 110-33; Galston, Liberal Purposes, 91-97; Budziszewski. True Tolerance, xi-xv, 57ff; Patrick Neal, “Liberalism and Neutrality,” Polity 14, no. 4 (Summer 1995): 667-76, and “Vulgar Liberalism,” 625-29. See also Michael Perry, “Neutral Politics?” Review of Politics 51, no. 4 (1989): 479-509, and Macedo, Liberal Virtues, 39-77. 18. Rawls, Theory, 216-21; cf. Larmore, Patterns, 60. 19. Budziszewski, True Tolerance, 62; also 96n3. Cf. Dworkin, Taking Rights Serious¬ ly, xv, 180, 182; Ackerman, Social Justice, 357-69; Larmore, Patterns, 53, 61-62. 20. Rawls, Theory, 587. It must be said, however, that already in the earlier work Rawls expressed some doubt with respect to the universal desirability of the primary goods, thereby betraying some doubt with respect to the ultimate neutrality of his theory and prefiguring his antifoundationalist turn (174). 21. “[Tjhere is no social world . . . that does not exclude some ways of life that realize in special ways certain fundamental values” (Political Liberalism, 197; also 198n33). Putting the matter somewhat too lightly, Rawls concedes that the question remains unsettled as to whether the exclusion or passing of some ways of life is to be regretted (198). 22. I.e., a doctrine providing for a comprehensive ordering of human values and virtues {Political Liberalism, xxvii, 11-14, 87).

Introduction

29

23. Political Liberalism, xvi, 48-66. 24. See Kautz, Liberalism and Community, xi, 82ff. 25. See especially Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice-, also Charles Taylor, “Atomism,” in Communitarianism and Individualism, eds. Shlomo Avineri and Avner deShalit (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 29-50. 26. With Rorty’s works, cf. Richard Flathman, Willful Liberalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992), and George Kateb, The Inner Ocean (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992). 27. Political Liberalism, 62-63. 28. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 127-29. See Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 57; also Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 179-91. 29. Contingency, 44, 57; Objectivity, 192-95. 30. Contingency, xv, 52-57, 190. 31. Galston, Liberal Purposes, 22-41. Cf. Macedo, Liberal Virtues, 25. 32. The problem of international politics, for instance, is among several “problems of extension” that seem unanswerable from within Rawls’s political conception. See Political Liberalism, 245; Galston, Liberal Purposes, 136-38, 154-58; John Gray, “Can We Agree To Disagree?” New York Times Book Review, 16 May 1993, 35. 33. Moreover, even for those members of a democracy who take as their premise the absolute superiority of the liberal-democratic constitutional form, Rawls fails to justify his insistence upon a public position of strict neutrality toward the claims of various reasonable comprehensive doctrines. One may concede the present fact of moral pluralism and yet observe, with Joseph Raz, that a respect for democratic consensus is perfectly compatible with an agreement upon constitutional procedures designed to facilitate a future consensus upon one or another comprehensive doctrine. Insisting that we incorporate into our consti¬ tutional reasoning the assumption of the permanence of the fact of moral-theoretical pluralism, Rawls effectively absolutizes what may be only a contingent and ephemeral fact of our history. Raz, Morality of Freedom, 126, and Russell Hittinger, “John Rawls’ Political Liberalism,” Review of Metaphysics 47 (March 1994): 589-90, 594-95, 598-602. 34. Contingency, 44, 54. 35. Contingency, 189. 36. Contingency, 59, 52. Cf. “That Old-Time Philosophy,” New Republic, 4 April 1988, where Rorty refers contemptuously to the activity of “intellectual factions” as a search for “tom-toms to beat” (33). He thus echoes the sentiment of his fellow pragmatist Oliver Wendell Holmes in the polemical essay “Natural Law.” Mixing irony and brutish¬ ness, Holmes opines that “a right is only the hypostasis of a prophecy—the imagination of a substance supporting the fact that the public force will be brought to bear upon those who do things said to contravene it. ... No doubt behind these legal rights is the fighting will of the subject to maintain them. ... A dog will fight for his bone” [Collected Legal Papers (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1920), 313-14], 37. Contingency, 198. 38. Contingency, 99-107. 39. See Harvey Mansfield, “Democracy and the Great Books,” New Republic, 4 April 1988, 35. 40. Contingency, 141 ff.; 96-188. 41. Budziszewski, True Tolerance, xi.

30

Chapter One

42. Thus in Hobbes’s elegant formulation, “the Thoughts, are to the Desires, as Scouts, and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired” [Leviathan, ed. C. B. MacPherson (New York: Penguin, 1968), chap. 8, p. 139]. 43. The Prince, chaps. 12-13. 44. See, e.g., the troubling argument of George Grant, English-Speaking Justice (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), 48-68, who concludes that “the very decency and confidence of English-speaking politics was related to the absence of philoso¬ phy” (68). Cf. Salkever, Finding the Mean, 205-36. 45. Thus Spoke Zarathrustra, “Zarathustra’s Prologue,” section 5. For examples of the postmodern caricature of the western tradition, see Rorty, Contingency, 77-79, 92, 96, 144, 151nl2, 159, and Objectivity, 191. 46. Liberal Purposes, 24; cf. 32-41. 47. For recent arguments, see especially Salkever, Finding the Mean', Budziszewski, The Resurrection of Nature (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986). Galston seems to me an ambiguous case; notwithstanding his clear sympathy for Aristotelian political thought, he maintains that the liberal virtues “need not be imported from the outside, for they are immanent in liberal practice and theory” (Liberal Purposes, 217). Among exam¬ ples of earlier scholarship sympathetic to this view, the work of Harry V. Jaffa on the American regime stands out. The character of Lincoln, “the highest thing in the American regime,” in Jaffa’s view, becomes intelligible “not on the basis of The Federalist—profound as that work is—but on that of the Nicomachean Ethics” [“Leo Strauss: 1899-1973,” in The Conditions of Freedom (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 8], 48. See especially Federalist #’s 1, 9, 10, 38. 49. This broad statement of the fundamental terms of the controversy obscures numerous particular variations among the works belonging to each school of interpretation. For a concise enumeration of the variety of the readings produced in particular by those who endeavor to “contextualize” Locke, see Jerome Huyler, Locke in America: The Moral Philosophy of the Founding Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 29. 50. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 202-51; also “Locke’s Doctrine of Natural Law,” in What is Political Philosophy? and Other Essays (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959), 197-220; C. B. MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 194-262. 51. Peter Laslett, “Introduction” to Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cam¬ bridge University Press, 1960, 1988), 3-126; John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), and John Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Devel¬ opment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); James Tully, A Discourse on Property: John Locke and his Adversaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), and An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cam¬ bridge University Press, 1993); Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987); W. M. Spellman, John Locke and the Problem of Depravity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 52. See especially Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory 8 (1969): 3-53; “Motives, Intentions, and the Interpretation of Texts,” New Literary History 3 (1972): 393-408; “Some Problems in the Analysis of

Introduction

31

Political Thought and Action,” Political Theory 2 (1974): 277-303; “Hermaneutics and the Role of History,” New Literary History 1 (1975-76): 209-32; and The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). See also J. G. A. Pocock, “The History of Political Thought: A Methodological Enquiry,” in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, Series II, eds. Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman (Oxford: Claren¬ don Press, 1962), and Politics, Language, and Time (New York: Atheneum, 1973); John Dunn, “The Identity of the History of Ideas,” in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, Series IV, eds. Peter Laslett, W. G. Runciman, and Quentin Skinner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 158-73; and Richard Ashcraft, “Political Theory and the Problem of Ideology,” Journal of Politics 42 (August 1980): 687-705. 53. I follow the usage of Michael Zuckert, “Appropriation and Understanding in the History of Political Philosophy,” Interpretation 13, no. 3 (1986): 403, who follows in turn the suggestion of Pocock. 54. Dunn, Political Thought of John Locke, 222. 55. See Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding,” especially 7-30. 56. My summary discussion of the Cambridge interpretive approach is most indebted to the more elaborate critical reviews in Nathan Tarcov, “Quentin Skinner’s Method and Machiavelli’s Prince,” Ethics 92 (1982): 692-709, and Zuckert, “Appropriation and Understanding.” I have also found very useful the discussion in Gordon Schochet, “Quen¬ tin Skinner’s Method,” Political Theory 2, no. 3 (1974): 261-76. 57. Contrast Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, 3-5; Edward Harpham, “Introduction,” in John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, ed. Edward Harpham (Lawrence: Univer¬ sity Press of Kansas, 1992), 13n4; Eldon Eisenach, “Religion and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government,” in Locke’s Two Treatises, 50. 58. See the apt statement by Huyler, Locke in America, especially 35-36. Ashcraft himself seems to come close to acknowledging this, Locke’s Two Treatises, 285n69. 59. Zuckert, “Appropriation and Understanding,” 421-22. 60. Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding,” 50. 61. In the work of Richard Ashcraft in particular, an additional cause for rejecting the possibility of genuine political philosophy appears to lie in the interpreter’s deep-seated egalitarian sentiments. By rejecting the distinction between political philosophy and ideology and therewith the possibility of a true, transcendent greatness in a few elite thinkers, Ashcraft means to “democratize” political theory, to show it to be the production of “thousands” of minds (Revolutionary Politics, 6-7). 62. See Ruth Grant, John Locke’s Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 10-1 ln9. Contrasting her approach to that of Ashcraft, Grant remarks reasonably “that though it is necessary to know why an author wrote what he did and for what audi¬ ence ... it is also necessary to know whether what the author says makes sense. . . . When an author makes his case in the form of an argument, it deserves to be considered for its cogency as an argument, and particularly so in this case.” See also A. John Sim¬ mons, The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 7. 63. See Schochet, 276n38. 64. Skinner, “Some Problems,” 287-301. On the possibility of defining in advance which ideas are available to thinkers in a given context, see “Meaning and Understanding,” 8-9; “Some Problems,” 283, 299-300. 65. See Tarcov, “Skinner’s Method,” 702-09.

32

Chapter One

66. Of late, several scholars whose training would seem to engender in them a much closer sympathy for the Cambridge than for the Straussian school have distanced them¬ selves, to some degree, from the more radically historicist elements of Skinner’s approach. Thus James Tully has declared an intention to combine the disciplines of political philoso¬ phy and history of political thought, affirming that Locke’s political thought may provide some vital critical perspective for late twentieth-century readers. See An Approach to Political Philosophy, especially 1-6. See also Jerome Huyler, Locke in America, 29-41, especially 30-31. A more limited concession appears in Dunn’s seemingly reluctant relaxing of his earlier position on the utter irrelevance of Locke for our own society [“What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Political Theory of John Locke?” in Interpreting Political Responsibility (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), 9-25]. 67. Locke, “Epistle to the Reader” of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 8-10. 68. With this thought in mind, one might compare Locke’s claim in the same “Epistle” that he serves the causes of truth and usefulness “in one of the meanest ways” (10) with Machiavelli’s less obviously humble positioning in “a low and mean state,” in his own “Dedicatory Letter” to The Prince, ed. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 4. On the false modesty in Locke’s epistle, see the instructive observations of Rosalie Colie, “The Essayist in his Essay,” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. John Yolton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 239-47. 69. On the profundity of Bacon’s philosophic and legislative ambitions, see Laurence Lampert, Nietzsche and Modern Times: A Study of Bacon, Descartes, and Nietzsche (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), 1-141. 70. Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding,” 47-48, and “Some Problems,” 286-87; Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, 286-337. 71. See Andrzej Rapaczinski, Nature and Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), 15. See also Paul Rahe, “John Locke’s Philosophical Partisanship,” Political Science Reviewer 20 (1991): 35-36, on Ashcraft’s dismissal of the possibility of “grand politics,” and Republics Ancient and Modern (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 526: “Of all the pamphlets published at the time of the revolution, the Two Treatises of Government was beyond question the most abstract and radical. ” 72. Ashcraft, Locke’s Two Treatises, 35-59, also “The Politics of Locke’s Two Trea¬ tises," 18-22; Simmons, The Lockean Theory of Rights, 15-16; Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy, 291. See also Raghuveer Singh, “John Locke and the Theory of Natural Law,” Political Studies 9 (1961): 105-18. Michael Zuckert provides an illuminat¬ ing critique of this traditionalist reading of Locke in Natural Rights and the New Republi¬ canism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994): 187-246. Cf. Rahe, “Locke’s Philosophical Partisanship,” 30-35. 73. Eisenach, “Religion and Locke’s Two Treatises," 50. Although his emphasis on the revolutionary, anti-historicist implications of Locke’s epistemological and pedagogical thought is sound, Peter Schouls may leave his work exposed to this sort of charge by needlessly ascribing to Locke’s thought an uncompromising “contextlessness.” See Rea¬ soned Freedom: John Locke and Enlightenment (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992), especially 15-37. Simmons’s Lockean Theory of Rights seems to me similarly vulnerable. 74. For the distinction, see ECHU 3.9.3ff. See Strauss, Natural Right and History, 22021; Michael Zuckert, “Fools and Knaves: Reflections on Locke’s Theory of Philosophic Discourse,” Review of Politics 36, no. 4 (1974): 544-64. 75. Tarcov, “Quentin Skinner’s Method,” 700-01.

Introduction

33

76. “We have our Understandings no less different than our Palates; and he that thinks the same Truth shall be equally relished by every one in the same dress, may as well hope to feast every one with the same sort of Cookery” (ECHU “Epistle to the Reader,” 8; also Works 1823, 4.52-53). 77. See Skinner’s account of the “mythology of coherence” (“Meaning and Under¬ standing,” 16-22), with Dunn’s protest against the “illicit explanatory coherence” that he believes some commentators impose upon Locke {Political Thought of John Locke, 6). 78. Tarcov, “Locke’s Second Treatise and the ‘Best Lence Against Rebellion,”’ Review of Politics 43 (1981): 200. Cf. Ashcraft’s sensible statement to similar effect, Locke’s Two Treatises, 225. 79. Ashcraft in particular employs quite unfortunate rhetoric, in complaining of the “monumental obtuseness” of those who persist in characterizing Locke as an ultimately secular thinker, in the face of “massive” public and private evidence of Locke’s religious convictions [“The Politics of Locke’s Two Treatises,” 17; see also Ashcraft’s review of Thomas Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism, in Political Theory 18, no. 1 (Lebruary 1990): 161]. Charging falsely that the “Straussians conveniently chose to ignore” Locke’s unpublished manuscripts on the law of nature, Ashcraft himself ignores Strauss’s extended review of Von Leyden’s edition of that work, published in the American Political Science Review over twenty years earlier and reprinted in What Is Political Philosophy ?, as well as Robert Horwitz’s more recent edition, published as Locke’s Questions Concern¬ ing the Law of Nature (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990). More to the point, Ashcraft ignores in the work itself Locke’s insistent references to the deity in pagan terms [see Horwitz, “Editor’s Introduction” to Locke’s Questions Concerning the Law of Nature, and Diskin Clay, “Translator’s Introduction” to the same work, 55-59, 80-82], as well as, among other anomalies, the interesting fact, noticed by David Wootton, “John Locke: Socinian or Natural Law Theorist?” in Religion, Secularization, and Political Thought, ed. James E. Crimmins (London: Routledge, 1989), 54-56, 66n50, that Locke experiments at least in one unpublished manuscript with an argument designed to demonstrate morality to those with no belief in an afterlife, if not indeed to atheists. 80. See Dunn, Political Thought of John Locke, x-xi, 266-67, and Stephen Dworetz, The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke, Liberalism, and the American Revolution (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990), 187-91. 81. With the remarks of Ashcraft cited above, cf. the still more intemperate assault by John Yolton, “Locke on the Law of Nature,” Philosophical Review 61 (1958): 477-98. 82. Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 141-58; especially 149, 145, 141, 158. Cf. Strauss, Natural Right, 202-20. Rahe’s discussion in Republics Ancient and Modern seems to me to display a similar ambiguity; cf. e.g., 302ff. with 490ff. 83. The deeply involved question of the precise classification of Locke’s Christianity is beyond the scope of this book. My suggestion of Locke’s Socinianism draws especially from the brief but telling argument of David Wootton, “John Locke: Socinian or Natural Law Theorist?” and the review of the evidence by Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern, 291-M2, 452-67, 489-501. Also informative but ultimately less clear-sighted are the studies of Spellman, John Locke and the Problem of Depravity, and Marshall, John Locke. 84. Lor a review of the abundant evidence attesting Locke’s success in this project at least in colonial America, see Dworetz, 77le Unvarnished Doctrine. 85. See Locke’s fragment “Morality,” reprinted in Thomas Sargentich, “Locke and Ethical Theory: Two MS. Pieces,” Locke Newsletter 5 (1974): 26-28. I argue in chapter five that Locke also makes this sort of argument indirectly in ECHU 2.21. 86. Cf. the statement to similar effect of Peter Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, 4n7.

34

Chapter One

87. Dunn, Political Thought of John Locke, 29, x-xi. Laslett, “Introduction,” 88-90, 82, also affirming Locke’s ultimate fideism, supposes with generous intention that “all thinkers are inconsistent” and finds that Locke yet distinguishes himself as “perhaps, the least consistent of all the great philosophers.” See also J. W. Gough, John Locke’s Political Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 123. 88. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., America’s Constitutional Soul (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 111. Cf. Rahe, Republics, 452-54. 89. Strauss, Natural Right, 220. 90. See Strauss, Natural Right, 221, 267-81, and “On the Basis of Hobbes’ Political Philosophy” as well as “What Is Political Philosophy?”, in What Is Political Philosophy?, 182, 191, 196, 40-55. 91. Although it is clear that Locke owes much to Bacon, in particular the naturalhistorical method elaborated in chapter three below, I think that Rahe overstates the case somewhat in describing Locke as “a Baconian through and through” (Republics, 292). 92. Although the relation between Locke and Montaigne has received more attention from students of Montaigne than from those of Locke, brief notice of the importance of this relation appears in Axtell, Locke’s Educational Writings, 63-64, and Zuckert, Natural Rights, 197, 360n41. On the influence of Montaigne over Locke’s mode of literary presen¬ tation, especially in the Essay, see Colie, “The Essayist in his Essay,” 237, 257. Further discussion appears in Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern, 272-74, 291-92, 314-15. In his excellent study The Political Philosophy of Montaigne (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), David L. Schaefer notices at numerous points his subject’s relation to Locke and cites fuller explorations of the relation by earlier students of Montaigne. I thank Professor Robert Eden for first drawing my attention to the importance of Montaigne for understanding Locke. 93. My emphasis on the arduous struggle for rationality in Locke’s thought may be contrasted with Schouls’s assertions of Locke’s dogmatic, enthusiastic, progressivist optimism {ReasonedFreedom, 172, 226, 231-32). 94. Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Grant, John Locke’s Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics', Schouls, Reasoned Freedom', Simmons, Lockean Theory-, Zuckert, Natural Rights; Huyler, Locke in America. I should perhaps mention along with these works that of John Colman, John Locke’s Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983), who argues for Locke’s overall philosophical coherence, although he ultimately excludes Locke from the first rank of moral thinkers. In addition, Pangle’s important work (Spirit of Modern Republicanism) and that of Paul Rahe (Republics Ancient and Modern) seem to me ambiguous in their relation to the class of alternative readings in which I place my own. Pangle’s remarks concerning the presence of a Socratic inspiration in Locke’s thought represent a perceptive and important innovation in commentary on Locke, but they coexist uneasily with his assertions of Locke’s fundamental utilitarianism. I revisit this point in chapter five. 95. Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty, 77. 96. The exceptions here are those scholars influenced by Leo Strauss, who seems himself to have regarded this objection as unanswerable. Among those with whom I associate myself in the search for an alternative reading, Tarcov is well aware of the gravity of the difficulty, but he is primarily concerned to elaborate the substance rather than the theoretical basis of Locke’s moral (and therefore political) philosophy (Locke’s Education, 77). Zuckert, Natural Rights, does not discuss at length Locke’s specific account of natural science, but he does provide a sustained and thoughtful treatment of the

Introduction

35

implications of Locke’s critique of teleological interpretations of the natural world. My most important disagreement with Zuckert concerns not Locke’s conception of science, but rather his understanding of the precise moral status of the rational self that Locke seeks to cultivate in accordance with his understanding of the problem of the natural condition.

■

.

.

Chapter Two

The Question of the Foundation An elaboration of Locke’s political rationalism must begin with an exploration of the basis of the principle of justice that Locke would promote. But as this “begin¬ ning” will in fact consume much of this book, reaching completion only in chapter five, the Specific task of the present chapter is to clarify the object of our search. In the “Preface” to the Two Treatises of Government, Locke indicates, with characteristic ambiguity and yet with notable audacity, the general character and purpose of the work. He writes “to establish the Throne of our Great Restorer, Our Present King William; to make good his Title, in the Consent of the People,” and “to justifie to the World, the People of England, whose love of their Just and Natural Rights, with their Resolution to preserve them, saved the Nation when it was on the very brink of Slavery and Ruine” (7T “Preface”).1 As commentators have frequently observed, the Two Treatises is an occasional work, written and published to promote, explain, and defend a particular political action.2 Yet it is much more. Locke’s brief statement implies that the Two Treatises could not adequately serve its occasional purpose without also serving a larger purpose. In bringing to the throne “our Great Restorer” William, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, as Locke wishes it understood, signifies less a restoration of the forms of the ancient constitution and of the rights of Englishmen than an affirmation of a proposition of modem political philosophy. We noted in the preceding chapter the innovative significance of the fact that Locke largely dispenses with the conven¬ tional justifications grounded in the tradition of English constitutionalism, prefer¬ ring instead to rest his case on an appeal to a higher law. Locke’s success in establishing William’s particular title and in justifying “the people of England” to the world depends upon his ability to defend a purportedly universal principle of 37

38

Chapter Two

justice: just government rests upon the consent of the governed and serves the end of securing certain rights natural to humankind. Near the beginning of the Second Treatise, Locke summarizes his doctrine of justice in promising terms. “To understand Political Power right, and derive it from its Original,” he proposes, “we must consider what state all Men are natu¬ rally in, and that is, a State of perfect Freedom” and “also of Equality” (4). The freedom and equality proper to the natural, nonpolitical condition are not absolute, but instead function to limit one another. The state of nature “is not a State of Licence . . . [but] has a Law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one: And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that all being equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions” (6). As natural liberty is limited by the obligation to respect others as one’s equals, so natural equality imposes only a limited, essen¬ tially negative obligation to respect the independence of others and therefore to refrain from harming them. Now, by what virtue or by what dispensation do we merit the protection of the specific rights that Locke ascribes to us? How is human reason capable of establishing this account of natural justice? Having endured the First Treatise's exhaustive refutation of what Locke de¬ scribes as the absurd, strangely incomplete arguments of Sir Robert Filmer (e.g., 1.11, 49, 71, 77), the reader who takes Locke’s prefatory remarks as a promise to elaborate the true foundation of justice must find the Second Treatise disap¬ pointing. Although he declares it “certain there is such a Law,” as he proceeds to discuss the natural right of punishment Locke declares it “besides my present purpose, to enter here into the particulars of the Law of Nature” (12). And it appears that in the Two Treatises Locke sidesteps not only the particulars, but also the basis of the law of nature. In the First Treatise, he implies that the exploration of such issues would distract him from the work’s primary practical purpose: “The great Question which in all Ages has disturbed Mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of those Mischiefs which have ruin’d Cities, depopulated Countries, and disordered the Peace of the World, has been, Not whether there be Power in the World, nor whence it came, but who should have it” (106). Reflecting on this remark in the light of other difficulties in Locke’s presenta¬ tion, Laslett complains more generally that a demonstration of the existence and content of natural law seems always, not only in the Two Treatises, to have been beside Locke’s present purpose.3 This understandable complaint contains an im¬ portant element of justice. Nonetheless, I hope to show that Locke is neither confused nor disingenuous in insisting in the Essay that the “Candle, that is set up in us, shines bright enough for all our Purposes” (1.1.5; 4.12.11). That Locke maintains in the same context that our purposes are primarily practical4 suggests, contrary to Laslett’s opinion, that the Essay is not written, relative to the Two Treatises, “for an entirely different purpose and in an entirely different state of mind.”5 From his claim of permission, later in the Second Treatise, for a certain degree of terminological imprecision in “a discourse of this nature” (11.52), one can infer that Locke regards the Two Treatises as a mere civil discourse, in which

The Question of the Foundation

39

more philosophically rigorous arguments would be out of place.6 The suggestion is that one should search beyond the Two Treatises, especially into his philosophi¬ cal and theological works, to gain a deeper understanding of the basis of justice as Locke conceives of it. But in order to conduct such a search profitably, we must properly identify the sort of justificatory argument for which we search. Laslett and others end in frustration, I believe, in large part because they miscon¬ ceive the sort of justification that Locke promises. In this chapter, I will show that by pursuing the implications of the suggestions concerning the foundations of justice that Locke presents at the outset of the Second Treatise, we can gain a clearer idea of what sort of argument Locke believes necessary to justify his claims. In the process of reflecting, in this and later chapters, on the arguments underlying these initial suggestions, we gain a greater awareness of the complexity and difficulty of the problem of political rationality as Locke understands it.

On the Appeal to Self-Evident Truth At first glance, Locke’s first suggestion relative to these questions might seem to constitute less an argument, in the strict sense of the term, than a pre-emptive declaration that no genuine argument is necessary for the establishment of the natural rights doctrine. There is “nothing more evident,” he proclaims, “than that Creatures of the same species and rank promiscuously bom to all the same advan¬ tages of Nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without Subordination or Subjection” (II.4). What is immediately noteworthy in this brief, ambiguous remark is that in using the phrase “nothing more evident,” Locke may appear to classify the principle of equal natural rights as a self-evident tmth, a truth to which we assent intuitively. That he intends at least to present this appearance is more strongly evident in the sequel, wherein he offers rhetorical support for his claim by invoking the authority of “the Judicious Hooker,” who regards the principle of natural human equality “as so evident in itself, and beyond all question” (II.5). A few paragraphs later, the law of nature appears still more easily accessible, as a principle that is not merely intuitively known but indeed innate. Locke uses Cain’s fear of retribution for his fratricide to illustrate how “plain was it writ in the Hearts of all Mankind” that there is a natural right to punish or even to destroy criminals (II. 11). From such remarks some scholars have inferred, again understandably, that some principle of intuition or innatism constitutes in Locke’s political philosophy the basis of our knowledge of justice.7 This is an unwarranted inference. Locke’s cryptic suggestions concerning self-evidence and innatism in the Second Treatise naturally lead the reader to consult his more elaborate discussions of these princi¬ ples in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and thus to confront an obvious difficulty. According to Locke’s systematic attack on the doctrine of innatism in the Essay’s Book I, there are simply no innate moral principles. “Principles of Action indeed there are lodged in Men’s Appetites, but these are

40

Chapter Two

so far from being innate Moral Principles, that if they were left to their full swing, they would carry Men to the over-turning of all Morality” (1.3.3). The difficulty does not end here. Focusing primarily on the specific doctrine of innatism, Locke also brings within his sights all a priori or undefended claims of moral knowledge, including the closely related principle of moral intuitionism. Self-evident or intuitive knowledge as Locke explains it carries the highest degree of certainty of which the understanding is capable. It is “irresistible.” It “forces itself immediately to be perceived . . . and leaves no room for Hesitation, Doubt, or Examination” (ECHU 4.2.1). Intuitions are simply and immediately compel¬ ling. So far as we are rational, we assent to them upon recognition or upon grasp¬ ing the meanings of the relevant terms. A claim of intuition is in effect a claim that a statement is beyond argumentation, that one must simply recognize it and assent to it.8 In the Essay, Locke counsels an attitude of extreme suspicion toward assertions of unquestionable principles of any kind: [I]f it be the privilege of innate Principles, to be received upon their own Authority, without examination, I know not what may not be believed, or how any one’s Princi¬ ples can be questioned. If they may, and ought to be examined, and tried, I desire to know how first and innate Principles can be tried; or at least it is reasonable to demand the marks and characters, whereby the genuine, innate Principles, may be distinguished from others; that so, amidst the great variety of Pretenders, I may be kept from mis¬ takes, in so material a point as this. (1.3.27; also 1.3.14, 20, 26)

Pursuant to his account of intuition, Locke denies the existence of self-evident moral rules just as firmly as he denies the existence of innate moral principles: “I think, there cannot any one moral Rule be propos’d, whereof a Man may not justly demand a Reason: which would be perfectly ridiculous and absurd, if they were innate, or so much as self-evident” (ECHU 1.3.4; emphasis partly supplied).9 To deny the existence of such rules or principles is important not only because claims of this sort are false. Locke is acutely sensitive to the ease with which both intuitionism and innatism may lend themselves to authoritarian abuse: “Nothing can be so dangerous, as Principles thus taken up without questioning or exami¬ nation; especially if they be such as concern Morality, which influence Men’s Lives, and give a biass to all their Actions” (ECHU 4.12.4).10 It is of the greatest practical importance that moral principles be rationally defensible. To accord any moral principles a privileged exemption from the requirement of rational support is to invite the degeneration of moral discourse into a purely arbitrary contest of opposing wills. Given the fact that “great numbers are ready at any time to seal with their Blood” the principles they most cherish (ECHU 1.3.27, also 26), at stake here is far more than the civility of intellectual disputants. As we shall see in greater detail in later chapters, at the very center of Locke’s political philos¬ ophy lies the observation that theoretical or doctrinal states of war are not easily separable from actual states of war involving actual bloodshed. One might wonder why Locke recommends to his readers in the Second Trea¬ tise, his most political writing, a mode of justification that he denounces as both

The Question of the Foundation

41

theoretically authoritarian and politically dangerous in the Essay. That he is as well aware in the former as in the latter of the difficulties involved in claims of innate or self-evident moral truths seems sufficiently clear. In the Second Treatise, shortly after making his initial suggestions concerning a self-evident or innate moral law, Locke proceeds to observe that knowledge of the law of nature is neither simply natural nor immediate, but requires study (11.12; also 124).11 But it is best to leave aside for now the question concerning the rationale for this seemingly odd procedure, and to undertake a closer examination of Locke’s intro¬ ductory suggestions concerning the basis of his doctrine of justice. Strictly understood, Locke claims first that there is “nothing more evident” than the inference of natural moral equality from the given, basic fact of species equality (7TII.4). In the immediate sequel, he attributes to Hooker, apparently approvingly, the broader, more ambiguous opinion that “This Equality of Men by Nature” is “so evident in it self, and beyond all question” (5). In his initial formu¬ lations in the Second Treatise, then, Locke certainly suggests that the deduction of natural jural equality from the basic fact of human species equality is a selfevident truth, and perhaps suggests that the fact of human species equality itself is a self-evident truth.12 Stated most simply, his deduction yields a variant of the fundamental principle of distributive justice: treat equals equally. Two questions arise. First, is the validity of Locke’s deduction of equal natural rights from an assumed fact of species equality self-evident? Second, is the basic fact of human species equality itself truly self-evident? I shall consider these two questions in the order stated. A careful examination of the first leads immediately to an examina¬ tion of Locke’s famous “workmanship” argument.

The Argument from Divine Workmanship A moment’s reflection reveals that the validity of Locke’s purported deduction is by no means simply self-evident, but rather is contingent upon several qualifying conditions to which, directly or indirectly, Locke calls our attention. First, the fact of species equality can imply equality in moral rights only in the absence of a “manifest Declaration” of rightful inequality among species members by a supe¬ rior being, a “Lord and Master of them all” (II.4). For present purposes, let us assume that Locke has established this condition with his argument against Filmer in the First Treatise. As Locke surely recognizes, however, the bare fact of spe¬ cies equality even in the absence of any divinely authorized right does not justify his initial deduction. In the case of a species of subrational predators, for instance, the rule of treating equals equally would engender not a pattern of relations free of “Subordination or Subjection,” but instead only an equal right or opportunity for predation. The difficulty that this sort of objection poses appears to call forth Locke’s more affirmative appeal to the principle of divine workmanship. This “workmanship” argument is both the most prominent, and, at least for the century or so following its composition, the most historically influential of Locke’s arguments concerning the basis of justice,13 and it has at present regained

42

Chapter Two

the consideration of many scholars as the foundation of Locke’s political thought. Not only is there not a god or superior being who authorizes relations of subordi¬ nation or subjection among us, according to this argument, but in fact there is a deity who forbids us to destroy or dominate one another. Human beings can claim no property in one another, because we are all the “Workmanship” and therefore the property “of one Omnipotent, and infinitely Wise Maker . . . sent into the World by his order and about his business,” with a positive obligation to respect and preserve ourselves and others (II.6; also 11.56, 79).14 Thus the fact of divine workmanship appears to underlie or justify the fact of species equality as the basic premise of Locke’s argument. Who then is this “Omnipotent, and infinitely Wise Maker,” and how do we know of his existence and legislative providence? In the Essay’s chapter “Of Faith and Reason, and their Distinct Provinces,” Locke identifies two possible modes of gaining answers to such questions. Knowledge of God’s existence and activity could come to us via either reason or revelation: either in the form of “Deductions made from such Ideas ... got by the use of [our] natural Faculties,” or “upon the Credit of [a] Proposer, as coming from GOD, in some extraordinary way of Communication” (4.18.2). Broadening the procedure he employed in his early manuscript on the law of nature, wherein he excluded “supernatural and divine Revelation” from the scope of his inquiry (LN fols. 23-24), Locke in his later, published works designs his workmanship argument to permit appeals to both these modes. Throughout the First Treatise in particular, Locke’s appeals to the principle of divine workmanship clearly refer to the Biblical God (1.30, 53, 86). If we assume on the basis of these and associated statements that he identifies the divine maker with the God of Judeo-Christian revelation, then in order to claim knowledge of this maker, Locke must possess knowledge of the authenticity of the Biblical revelation as such. Accordingly, as his discussion of faith and reason proceeds in the Essay, the distinction between the two “provinces” appears less clear. Locke emphasizes his reaffirmation of the Thomistic conception of faith proper as above, but not contrary to, reason. He insists that in keeping with an understanding of God as “the bountiful Author of our Being,” the truths of revela¬ tion, as proper objects of faith, cannot be destructive of “the most excellent part of his Workmanship,” the understanding. They cannot contradict clear, self-evi¬ dent or demonstrative dictates of reason, although they may supersede reason’s probable conjectures (4.18.5-7). In this context it is not clear how restrictive, with respect to the claims of faith, the criterion of noncontradiction will be as a test of faith’s reasonableness. What is clear, however, is that with a view toward distin¬ guishing faith proper from mere enthusiasm, Locke is firmly determined to subject claims of faith or revelation to some test of their reasonableness. “Whatever GOD hath revealed,” he grants, “is certainly true”; but as to the fundamental question “whether it be a divine Revelation or no, Reason must judge” (4.18.10). Although some place faith “in contradistinction to Reason,” Locke concludes, “in Truth, it be nothing else but an Assent founded on the highest Reason” (4.16.14; 4.17.24).

The Question of the Foundation

43

“Reason,” he declares confidently, “must be our last Judge and Guide in every Thing” (4.19.14; cf. 7TI.58). Taken in conjunction with this affirmation of the necessity and possibility of rationally distinguishing true from false religion, Locke’s professions of fidelity to the Christian religion are sure to excite many readers’ expectations. “A Chris¬ tian I am sure I am, ” he declares against the accusations of the irascible John Edwards (Works 1823, 7.359), and the abundance of like professions scattered throughout his published and unpublished writings appear to support his claim. Even in the most rationalist of those writings, he asserts that “every thing said in the Text” of the Old and New Testament is “infallibly true” (ECHU 3.9.23; but cf. STCE 158).15 This seems a stronger, more affirmative claim than the minimal proposition that Christianity does not contradict the truths of reason. Yet one must take care to ascertain Locke’s precise meaning in affirming the truth of the Chris¬ tian religion. Just as he seeks to improve our scientific inquiries, so Locke seeks to establish our religious beliefs on more solid foundations, by discovering the true or the best “Measures, whereby a rational Creature . . . may, and ought to govern his Opinions. ” One must therefore be alert to the possibility that, like some of his other notions, the measures whereby Locke recommends that we govern our assent to religious doctrines will appear “new ... or out of the ordinary Road” (ECHU 1.1.6, “Epistle to the Reader,” 8). In fact, as his argument unfolds, it becomes clear that Locke does not mean to ascribe to natural reason the power to supply a historical verification of the Christian or any other claim to divine revela¬ tion. For those who desire a rational verification of the Christian revelation, Locke implicitly recommends an argument grounded primarily in moral principle, rather than in historical evidence drawn from the Biblical period. From Locke’s characteristically indirect discussions of this sensitive issue, one can infer that there are two main difficulties involved in any attempt to verify historically a claim to positive divine revelation. These correspond to the two modes in which we might receive such a revelation, which Locke designates “original” and “traditional” revelation: “By the one, I mean that first Impression, which is made immediately by GOD . . . and by the other, those Impressions delivered over to others in Words, and the ordinary ways of conveying our Con¬ ceptions one to another” (ECHU 4.18.3). Upon the latter mode, of course, most or all believers in a positively revealed truth must now rely. In his thematic dis¬ cussion of the relation of reason and faith, Locke does not directly challenge the possibility of verifying a revelation communicated through tradition, restricting himself to the cryptic (and as it turns out, misleading) remark that in regard to this sort of claim, “Reason has a great deal more to do” (4.18.6). In a more general discussion of assent to historical testimony, however, he proclaims that “in tradi¬ tional Truths, each remove weakens the force of the proof : And the more hands the Tradition has successively passed through, the less strength and evidence does it receive from them” (4.16.10; cf. Works 1823, 6.424). Despite their apparent agreement on the general relation of reason and faith, Locke’s skepticism regard¬ ing traditional testimony stands in direct contrast to the argument of Aquinas, who

44

Chapter Two

finds substantial probabilistic support for the Christian claim of revelation in the conversion of large numbers in the ancient world.16 This is not to overlook Locke’s claim—notwithstanding the difficulty in justi¬ fying assent “when Testimonies contradict common Experience, and the reports of History and Witnesses clash with the ordinary course of Nature, or with one another"—that miracles, when “well attested, do not only find Credit themselves; but give it also to other Truths, which need such Confirmation” (4.16.9, 13). In the Reasonableness Locke affirms that the miracles of Jesus and his followers were indeed well attested, or that they “never were, or could be, denied by any of the enemies or opposers of Christianity. ” This appears a very surprising asser¬ tion in view of the numerous figures in the Gospels themselves who do indeed deny these miracles,17 and commentators have rightly called attention to its mani¬ fest falseness. Most revealing in this respect is Locke’s choice of the emperor Julian as an example. As Michael Zuckert has observed, this example in fact “contradicts Locke’s point in a way that Locke must have meant to convey.”18 Its historical remoteness and the confusion among its contemporary witnesses thus constitute grave difficulties, in Locke’s argument, for the verification of the Chris¬ tian revelation by traditional report. A still deeper difficulty appears upon consideration of the basis of claims to original revelation. To avoid enthusiasm, the purported recipient of such a revela¬ tion must demand of himself, “How do I know that GOD is the Revealer of this to me; that this Impression is made upon my Mind by his holy Spirit, and that therefore I ought to obey it?” Locke insists that mere subjective assurance, how¬ ever firm, is insufficient. Therefore, “the holy Men of old, who had Revelations from GOD, had something else besides that internal Light of assurance in their own Minds, to testify to them, that it was from GOD.” This “something else” consisted in the “outward Signs,” the “visible Signs” or miracles that they were shown in order to persuade themselves and others of the authenticity of the mes¬ sage (4.19.10-15; RC 143, 237, 240, 242). Such signs must be “Marks that Reason cannot be mistaken in. ” How then can reason identify the truly miracu¬ lous? At this crucial point, Locke closes the discussion, apparently satisfied to raise a question to which he proposes no answer. The only truly plausible explanation for this reticence is that Locke does not believe human reason capable of establishing the miraculous character of any extraordinary event. In his posthumously published manuscript “A Discourse of Miracles” (1702), he affirms straightforwardly that miracles represent “that foun¬ dation on which believers of any divine revelation must ultimately bottom their faith” (86), and implicitly indicates the insuperable difficulties involved in the attempt to identify them. He proposes a permissive definition of a miracle as “a sensible operation, which, being above the comprehension of the spectator, and in his opinion contrary to the established course of nature, is taken by him to be divine” (79). He justifies the permissiveness of this definition in part on pedagogi¬ cal grounds: to define miracles more strictly as “operations contrary to the fixed and established laws of Nature,” or, more strictly yet, as “such divine operations

The Question of the Foundation

45

as are in themselves beyond the power of all created beings,” would mean that “the use of them would be lost, if not to all mankind, yet at least to the simple and illiterate (which is the far greatest part)” (86). Against the related objections that the more permissive definition relativizes miracles and therefore invalidates them as testimony of divine revelation, Locke affirms that “the carrying with it of a greater power than appears in opposition to it” can serve as “a sufficient induce¬ ment” to identify “any extraordinary operation” as a miracle (82). In cases in which miracles are alleged to attest opposing or contradictory “missions,” the truth lies with the manifestation of the greater supernatural power. But this response begs several exceedingly difficult questions. How are we to judge cases in which there is no direct opposition, or no opposition at all, between “extraordinary operations”? In cases involving opposition between extraordinary operations, is the mere fact of superior power sufficient to establish divinity, or is a certain minimum degree of power required? Should opposing supernatural operations be taken to attest the existence of opposing gods? How do we judge precisely the degrees of power exhibited? Would not such judgment itself require knowledge of the power of nature’s resistance to supernatural forces, and thus require knowledge of the physical laws of nature? Acknowledging that “the philos¬ ophers alone, if at least they can pretend to determine” the laws of nature, and that no one can determine the extent of the power of the beings created above human¬ kind but beneath the level of God, Locke doubts “whether any man learned or unlearned, can in most cases be able to say of any particular operation . . . that it is certainly a miracle” (86). Even this is an understatement of the difficulties involved. As Locke insists in the Essay, perfect, complete knowledge of the laws of nature or the powers of natural beings is simply beyond the capacity of human reason. So far as the strict identification of miracles would require such knowl¬ edge, one can only conclude that human reason is incapable of strictly identifying miracles, and therefore incapable of strictly verifying a claim to divine revela¬ tion.19 In the later letters concerning toleration, against the dogmatic Proast Locke plainly denies that we can have certain knowledge of the truth of the Christian religion (Works 1823, 6.144, 424, 557-59). At this point one might wonder whether this argument has the effect of es¬ tranging reason and faith, rather than strengthening their partnership against superstition. From this question arises an objection that is potentially fatal to the approach to Locke taken in this book. As was mentioned in the preceding chapter, the opinion persists among some scholars that, increasingly mindful of the insuper¬ able difficulties involved in authenticating the Christian revelation and in elaborat¬ ing a strict, demonstrative science of morality, Locke in his later years renounces the rationalism of the Essay and affirms a Christian fideism as the sole basis of his moral and political teaching.20 In this view, to characterize Locke fundamentally as a political philosopher or rationalist rather than as a political theologian would be to disregard his own mature reflections as to the basis of his political thought, revealed in particular in The Reasonableness of Christianity. To clear the way for my own fundamentally rationalist reading of Locke, therefore, it is necessary to

46

Chapter Two

demonstrate that the relevant evidence weighs decisively against any exclusionary reading of Locke as a Christian political theologian or skeptical fideist. To begin with, a retreat by Locke to a position of skeptical fideism, effectively dissolving the vital distinctions between faith and enthusiasm and between civil and spiritual interests, would mean no less than the collapse of his entire theological-political project. Locke could hardly have been unaware that such a retreat would destroy at a stroke his arguments for toleration, for subjecting reli¬ gion to rational scrutiny, and for founding just government upon the rational consent of the governed. Yet during and after the composition of the Reasonable¬ ness, Locke continues to defend his argument for toleration; adds a chapter to the Essay (“Of Enthusiasm,” first appearing in the fourth edition) in which he insists as strongly as ever upon subjecting claims of revelation to the judgment of reason; and reaffirms the possibility of a demonstrative science of morality (in a 1696 letter to his friend William Molyneux).21 Moreover, just as the Essay (as we shall see shortly) in fact makes no promise of reason’s absolute power to establish the moral law in political societies, so the Reasonableness does not announce the simple failure of reason in its moral task. When Locke declares in the latter that “human reason unassisted failed men in its great and proper business of morality,” he does not say that human reason failed to discover the true principles of moral¬ ity. He says that reason “never from unquestionable principles, by clear deduc¬ tions, made out an entire body of the Taw of nature,”’ never promulgated it to humankind “as a law” (241-42). His specific criticism of moral rationalism in the Reasonableness, already present in the Essay, amounts to the charge that reason prior to revelation had failed to show, in a manner compelling to the majority of humankind, how the rules of morality are obligatory or authoritative in charac¬ ter.22 The specific defect is that, in contrast to revelation, unassisted reason cannot supply “the surest, the safest, and most effectual way of teaching” morality, in particular to the “greatest part of mankind,” who “want leisure or capacity for demonstration” (RC 242-43; cf. ECHU 4.20.2-5). Those who see in such remarks a categorical rejection of moral rationalism should bear in mind that Locke’s complaints about the dissensus or sectarianism from which moral philosophy has always suffered apply equally well to the histor¬ ical practice of Biblical religion and especially Christianity (ECHU 3.9.23; LCT passim). To overcome the sectarianism of secular moral philosophy, Locke can hardly appeal to the historical practice of Christianity, but rather must look to a Christianity purified of its own historical sectarianism. Throughout his mature works and especially in the Reasonableness, Locke proposes just such a purified reading of Christianity, highlighting its tolerant, pacific, essentially reasonable character. By emphasizing the incapacity of unassisted reason to make moral truths generally effectual, the Reasonableness implies a renunciation not of moral rationalism as such but only of the hyperrationalist enthusiasm that possessed the deists of Locke’s day and that would come to possess some later Enlightenment thinkers (see Works 1823, 7.265). Addressing this work to “true Christian” read-

The Question of the Foundation

47

ers, Locke continues to insist upon the implication of the very title of the work, that “reason confirms” to us the truths of revelation (RC “Preface,” 243). The same and similar evidence prevails against a related and somewhat more challenging objection that might seem to arise from the Reasonableness’s account of the limits of moral rationalism. The great, decisive advantage of the Christian revelation, Locke asserts, lies in the clear sanction that it provides in support of the moral life, in the form of its promise of an afterlife that is undemonstrable by unassisted reason. “Upon this foundation, and upon this only, morality stands firm and will defy all competition” (RC 245). Even if the Christian revelation is not the exclusive source of knowledge of the moral law, does not Locke affirm nonethe¬ less that it holds the exclusive power to make that law effectual? The answer is no: Locke consistently affirms a role for reason in the discovery of both the content and the enforcement mechanisms of the moral law. On this point too, Locke’s procedure in the Reasonableness is similar to the procedure he employs in the Essay. In the latter, Locke issues prominent, apparently categorical declarations of the necessity of both God and otherworldly sanctions to the moral law, and quietly qualifies those declarations. These qualifications appear in his suggestions, first, that the bare possibility, as opposed to the certainty, of otherworldly sanc¬ tions can provide for at least some men sufficient support for morality, and sec¬ ond, that for some if not most men worldly sanctions can provide more powerful support for morality than otherworldly sanctions (cf. ECHU 1.3.6; 2.28.8 with 2.21.70; 2.28.12; also “Morality,” MS Locke c. 28, fols. 139-4023). In the Rea¬ sonableness, Locke’s seemingly categorical assertion is also qualified in context, applying to the “generality,” to those who “cannot know, and therefore . . . must believe” (245, 243). Locke consistently maintains that for at least a few, unas¬ sisted reason is capable of discovering sufficient motivational supports for moral rules, as well as their substantive dictates. As it is not reasonable to regard Locke as either a skeptical fideist or a dog¬ matic rationalist, one must explore further the grounds of the distinction between (reasonable) faith and (unreasonable) superstition that he wishes to maintain and to strengthen. By quietly pointing to the impossibility of historically verifying a claim of positive divine revelation, Locke suggests only that so far as it depends upon an establishment of the historical veracity of divine revelation, faith is doomed to collapse into enthusiasm. By urging at least the more “speculative and quick-sighted” readers of the Essay to probe the rational basis of religious faith (“Epistle to the Reader,” 9), Locke urges them to liberate themselves from super¬ stition. But by insinuating the impossibility of historically verifying any claim to divine revelation, Locke quietly prepares the replacement of this impossible and therefore destructive criterion with another, more reasonable standard for distin¬ guishing faith from enthusiasm. This helps to explain the otherwise puzzling turnabout with which he closes the Essay’s discussion of reason and faith. After suggesting that a satisfactory answer to the unanswerable question of verifying miracles is vital to the establishment of faith proper, Locke concludes with a placid reasurrance that it is not so vital after all: God can, or doth sometimes

48

Chapter Two

enlighten Men’s Minds . . . without any extraordinary Signs. . . .Where Reason or Scripture is express for any Opinion or Action, we may receive it as of divine Authority” (4.19.14, 16). Miracles aside, then, on what basis may we suppose that the teachings of Scripture, as well as those of reason, have the backing of divine authority? In the final analysis, the test of noncontradiction is the lone criterion that Locke provides. We have no reason to deny the truth of a given religious doctrine, unless it contradicts the truth established by reason. Absent the power conclusively to establish the truth of particular claims of divine revelation, in other words, we may yet by a looser criterion judge their reasonableness. More specifically, by this criterion we may judge minimally reasonable a religious doctrine that does not contradict what reason can establish concerning God and God’s ends for human¬ kind. More reasonable yet would be a faith that serves affirmatively to further those ends. This criterion enables Locke to judge favorably the reasonableness of Christianity. We shall see more particularly in chapter six how Christianity, rightly understood, promotes moral and civic health, according to Locke. What is important at present is to see the significance of this standard of reasonableness for Locke’s workmanship argument. Affirming the truth of Scripture while encouraging at least some readers to investigate the ground of that affirmation, Locke leads us to the preliminary conclusion that the basis of a reasonable assent to Christianity lies in its compatibility with the discoveries of reason in moral life—or in other words, with natural law or natural theology. To get to the bottom of the workmanship argument, one must recur from the interpretation of Scripture or from the realm of divine positive law to a consideration of “the Precepts of Natural Religion,” which Locke claims are “plain, and very intelligible to all Mankind, and seldom come to be controverted” (ECHU 3.9.23; cf. RC 13-27, 230-52).24 As compared with that in the Two Treatises, we find the more clearly ratio¬ nalist statement of Locke’s workmanship argument in the Essay. In Book IV of that work, Locke presents an argument affirming “the Existence of a GOD,” which runs, in brief outline, as follows. Human beings possess an intuitive aware¬ ness of our own existence and intelligence; human existence is not eternal, but had a beginning; it is absurd to think that intelligent could evolve from unintelligent being; therefore human beings must be the creatures of an eternal being of supe¬ rior power and intelligence, which we may call “God” (4.10). In the immediate context Locke leaves aside the legislative implications of this argument. Clearly unsatisfied to infer human rights and obligations from the bare premise of our creation by an eternal being of superior power and intelligence, however, Locke elaborates upon the idea of God elsewhere in the Essay. “[T]he most advanced notion we have of God,” he reasons, is of a being to whom we attribute our vari¬ ous perfections in infinite degree. “Thus having got from reflecting on our selves, the Idea of Existence, Knowledge, Power, and Pleasure, each of which we find it better to have than to want; and the more we have of each, the better; joining all these together, with infinity to each of them, we have the complex Idea of an

The Question of the Foundation

49

eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, infinitely wise, and happy Being” (3.6.11). Accordingly, Locke proposes later that not only infinite power and intelligence but also “infinite . . . Goodness, and Wisdom” constitute the basis of a divine Cre¬ ator’s claim to rule us as his workmanship (cf. 4.3.18; 2.28.8; 4.13.3 with TT II.6). To be worthy of human obedience, divine laws must carry ultimate sanc¬ tions, and must also embody a care for human well-being and the wisdom to direct us toward our proper ends. Thus Locke implies at the outset of The Reasonable¬ ness of Christianity that the premise of “the justice and goodness of the great and infinite God” constitutes the foundation of all religion (1). Still, it is necessary to inquire somewhat more specifically into the nature of this divine wisdom, goodness, and justice. The wise, good, and just God is no less the creator of the “inferior creatures” than of human beings, and Locke maintains unambiguously that human beings possess virtually absolute and arbitrary power over animals and lower forms of being. We may rightfully destroy any inferior creature “where some nobler use, than its bare Preservation calls for it.” And to provide subsistence for nobler—that is, human—beings is explicitly among the nobler uses to which the inferior creatures may be put {TT 1.85-87, 92; II.6). Permitting and indeed requiring such distinctions between nobler and inferior creatures, the divine wisdom and goodness, as Locke conceives of them, require governing the various creatures as befits their specific natures. To establish the principle of natural human equality in fundamental rights, Locke therefore finds it necessary to place alongside the premise of divine workmanship a companion premise. The “Foundations of our Duty and Rules of Action” are both the 11 Idea of a supreme Being, infinite in Power, Goodness, and Wisdom, whose Workman¬ ship we are, and on whom we depend; and the Idea of our selves, as understand¬ ing, rational Beings” (4.3.18; cf. 4.13.3). In this understanding of divine wisdom, goodness, and justice lies the basis of Locke’s insistent denial that positive revelation can contradict reason’s clear dictates. On this premise, it is inconceivable that a wise God could give human¬ kind the distinctive faculty of reason (while failing to provide us with governing subrational instincts), yet promulgate a law whose effect would be to “overturn all the Principles and Foundations of Knowledge he has given us; render all our Faculties useless; [and] wholly destroy the most excellent Part of his Workman¬ ship, our Understandings” (4.18.5, also 4.17.24; cf. 7TI.56-58, 86). On the same principle, it would be inconsistent with divine goodness and wisdom for God to create humankind with a constant, irresistible desire for happiness, yet promulgate a law whose obedience would produce human unhappiness (1.3.3; RC 245). The moral law to which human beings are subject must be compatible with the rational pursuit of happiness. Indeed Locke maintains that the substance of the moral law is identical to the rational pursuit of happiness.25 As we shall see in more detail in chapter five, it is possible to pursue this argument still further. The rational pursuit of happiness is truly moral, Locke claims, so far as it is ordered toward divine reward {ECHU 1.3.6; 2.28.5, 8). Supposing that eternal salvation is the divine reward to which Locke refers, one

50

Chapter Two

could conceive it possible that the rational pursuit of our otherworldly end requires a virtually total sacrifice of our mundane happiness. Again, however, a wise and benevolent God who holds forth the promise of salvation and the threat of damna¬ tion would have to provide for humankind a discoverable and traversable path toward the one and away from the other. Given (1) that positive revelation is verifiable only by its compatibility with natural revelation, and (2) that natural revelation is silent on the specific question of an afterlife, it follows that the path to eternal happiness must not diverge from the path to secular happiness, the only path shown us. The moral good that is God’s intention ultimately reduces to that portion of the natural good that reason recommends (see 2.28.5). Despite the seeming primacy it accords the principle of divine workmanship, this is the conclusion to which the argument of the Second Treatise points as well. In his initial references to the concept of species equality, Locke describes human individuals as “promiscuously bom to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use of the same faculties” (II.4; cf. 6,1.67). The premise of human species equal¬ ity implies equality in the possession of fundamental rights, on the condition that we are “promiscuously” or equally endowed with certain dignifying faculties. Almost immediately thereafter, Locke makes clear again that our distinctive ad¬ vantage or dignifying faculty, with which we are equally endowed as members of the human species, is reason. The law of nature is the law of reason. To violate “the right Rule of Reason” is “to quit the Principles of Human Nature.” It is to forfeit one’s rights and subject oneself only to the law of force or violence, “the way of Beasts” (II.6, 10-11, 57, 172, 181; cf. ECHU 1.1.1). In the final analysis, it is not the fact of divine workmanship itself, but instead our peculiar endowment with reason that dignifies us as equal bearers of fundamental rights, setting us above the inferior creatures without setting some of us above others.26 It bears repeated emphasis that this conclusion in no way implies that Locke’s appeals to the principle of divine workmanship are extraneous. I contend simply that although Locke considers the principle of divine workmanship vitally impor¬ tant for the task of making morality effectual, his understanding of the substance of human rights and obligations rests fundamentally upon an understanding of human nature, gained through the exertions of unassisted reason, that stands independent of the principle of divine workmanship. In later chapters, I defend the more specific thesis that Locke seeks to expand the dependence of at least political morality upon rational assent, and thus favors some moderation of morality’s general dependence upon positively revealed truths or otherworldly sanctions. My immediate concern, however, is only to establish that Locke presents neither a Christian fideism nor even a reasonable assent to one or another theological argu¬ ment as the true, exclusive basis of the principles of justice. Rather, in his account of the roles of reason and faith in political life, we have a sketch of what presentday liberals might recognize as Locke’s “overlapping consensus,” if in a nar¬ rower, more politically self-conscious form than that of Rawls. Throughout his mature works, Locke takes pains to provide space for two figures to appear at the base of his political thought: the thoroughgoing rationalist who is convinced that

The Question of the Foundation

51

reason can govern in public only with the assistance of religion,27 and the Chris¬ tian believer who reasons that he can serve the interest of the true, purified faith by developing moral arguments grounded in unassisted reason. But the common, public foundation upon which both must stand consists in the natural-rights doc¬ trine of justice. And this foundation in turn is constructed upon an understanding of the nature of the human species that is accessible to unassisted reason. Having thus located the focus of Locke’s argument concerning the substance of natural right in the fact of human equality-in-rationality rather than in the fact of divine creation, we proceed to the second of the two general questions posed at the close of the previous section. There is, of course, much more to say with respect to precisely how the faculty of rationality qualifies us as the bearers of fundamental natural rights. But if, setting aside this question for the moment, we posit as Locke’s premise that human beings are equal in the possession of a mor¬ ally or jurally qualifying faculty of reason, then the validity of his deduction of natural rights is obviously no longer in question. What would remain in question is only the truth of this premise itself. As we have seen, at least in the Second Treatise Locke wishes to convey the impression that his initial deduction of fun¬ damental natural rights proceeds from a self-evident premise. But just as few present-day thinkers would accept this premise as self-evidently true, so there are compelling reasons to doubt that Locke himself affirms the premise of human equality-in-rationality in this simple way. In the Essay, Locke denies that we have intuitive knowledge of any real exis¬ tence, save of our own existence and that of God. To grant that I have intuitive knowledge of my own existence, even of my existence as a thinking being, does not allow me to claim as a self-evident truth either that my capacity for thought is a capacity for the sort of reason that marks me as a bearer of natural rights, or that other finite thinking beings exist and possess the requisite faculty (see 4.7.7; 4.9). In the light of the Essay's account of intuitive knowledge, the Second Trea¬ tise's jural premise would appear to represent not a self-evident truth, but rather a proposition requiring empirical or historical confirmation. But if this is so, then at this point Locke’s argument.confronts a serious difficulty: If the Second Trea¬ tise's principles of justice depend upon empirical knowledge of our species nature, then they depend upon a form of knowledge whose possibility Locke seems deci¬ sively to rule out in the Essay (3.3; 3.6).28 Some scholars suggest that Locke attempts to avoid this difficulty in his famous though quite elusive proposal of a demonstrative science of morality, by attempt¬ ing to liberate moral knowledge from any dependence upon knowledge of nature. Thus James Tully argues that among “the main ideological objectives of the Essay is to prove the potential certainty and scientific status of moral and political knowl¬ edge and to illuminate its superiority over knowledge of the natural world.”29 Despite his curious rhetorical subordination of the Essay's concern with moral issues,30 Locke supplies much encouragement to such readings. He declares in the closing chapter that the study of nature is “wholly separate and distinct” from the science of ethics or morality, and maintains throughout the work that however

52

Chapter Two

imperfect our knowledge of the natural world, the “Candle, that is set up in us,” once properly directed, “shines bright enough for all our Purposes” (4.21.5; 1.1.5; cf. 4.12.11). Yet, without denying the significance of such statements, in the following section I argue that a science of morality that is wholly removed from the empirical study of nature represents neither a solution nor Locke’s solu¬ tion to the problem in question. Careful examination reveals that despite the ap¬ pearance of independence that he evidently wishes to produce, the science of morality and justice that Locke proposes in fact depends vitally upon a historically based account of human nature and of the human condition.

A Demonstrative Science of Justice? Locke’s proposal of a demonstrative moral science rests decisively on the premise that the main constituents of moral discourses are not the ideas and names of substances, of things subsisting independently in the world, but rather those of modes, in particular mixed modes, and relations. “Modes” are complex ideas that “contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are consid¬ ered as Dependences on, or Affections of Substances” (2.12.4). Modes are either simple or mixed. A mixed mode is a mode “compounded of simple Ideas of sev¬ eral kinds,” such as, for example, the idea of “Beauty, consisting of a certain composition of Colour and Figure, causing delight in the Beholder” (2.12.5). Mixed modes include “the greatest part of the Words made use of in Divinity, Ethicks, Law, and Politicks, and several other Sciences” (2.22.12; 2.28.15). They are by definition general ideas, standing for “sorts or Species of Things” (3.5.1). They enable us to classify kinds of actions, and serve as the sort of complex ideas by which we define such concepts as justice, sacrilege, adultery, murder, and parricide, among innumerable others (2.22.12; 3.5 passim). Crucial to the possibility of a strict science of morality as Locke presents it is the fact that, like mathematical concepts and in contrast to substances, mixed modes are formed “very arbitrarily, made without Patterns, or reference to any real Existence” (3.5.3). They have “no particular foundation in Nature” (3.5.10). They consist of “fleeting, and transient Combinations of simple Ideas, which have but a short existence any where, but in the Minds of Men” (2.22.8). They are fundamentally no more than hypothetical constructs or definitions. The action of killing, for instance, claims many objects in addition to human beings and is performed by many actors, human and nonhuman (3.5.6). Out of the mass of ideas or of more-or-less transient associations of ideas that the world presents to human perception, the formation of the complex idea to which we refer the name “murder” is therefore a free act of the understanding, an act of abstraction no more compelled by the desire to represent faithfully an external order than would be the formation of any of the other literally innumerable possible combinations of ideas that our experience presents to us. The names of mixed modes do not merely function as designations of actions but are in an important sense constitu¬ tive of species of actions: “in mixed Modes ... it is the Name that seems to pre-

The Question of the Foundation

53

serve those Essences, and give them their lasting duration” (3.5.10, also ll).31 Locke argues that the fact that “this sort of complex Ideas may be made, abstract¬ ed, and have names given them, and so a Species be constituted, before any one individual of that Species ever existed,” puts beyond doubt the arbitrary or volun¬ tary character of their formation (3.5.5). Because they are products of the understanding, mixed-mode ideas are in principle perfectly definable (3.11.15). In a sense our definitions of them must be perfect definitions, must be “not capable of any Deformity, being made with no reference to any thing but [themselves]” (2.30.4). As Locke expresses it in his more specialized terminology, because our mixed-mode ideas are “archetypes,” not “ectypes” or representations of “things really existing” (2.31.12ff.), they “are, and cannot but be adequate Ideas” (2.31.3). Their real and nominal essences are identical (3.3.18). The understanding can truly know only what it makes.32 It is ultimately for this reason, says Locke, that moral knowledge is capable of demonstration. For Certainty being but the Perception of the Agreement, or Disagreement of our Ideas', and Demonstration being nothing but the Perception of such Agreement, by the Intervention of other Ideas, or Mediums, our moral Ideas, as well as mathematical, being Archetypes themselves, and so adequate, and complete Ideas, all the Agreement, or Disagreement, which we shall find in them, will produce real Knowledge, as well as in mathematical Figures. (4.4.7) 1

Conceived in abstraction from empirical reality, moral science would seem to involve simply the settling of the required definitions, the formulation of rules to designate particular sorts of actions as right or wrong, virtuous or vicious, and the judgment of individual cases to determine the character of actions and their con¬ formity with the relevant rules. Mindful in particular of the Second Treatise's apparent reliance upon the premise of real human species equality, one might therefore object that because any ethical system must include some conception of the subjects of its rules, the presence of empirically grounded substance ideas is unavoidable. Locke replies that the “Names of Substances, if they be used in them, as they should, can no more disturb Moral, than they do Mathematical Discourses.” The natures or definitions of substances are “not so much enquir’d into, as supposed.” With respect to the presumptive subject of moral rules, Locke stipulates that We mean nothing by Man, but a corporeal Rational Creature: What the real Essence or other Qualities of that Creature are in this case, is no way considered. And there¬ fore, whether a Child or Changeling be a Man in a physical Sense, may amongst the Naturalists be as disputable as it will, it concerns not at all the moral Man, as I may call him, which is this immoveable unchangeable Idea, a corporeal rational Being. (3.11.16)

54

Chapter Two

“With respect to subjection to the law,” Ruth Grant explains, “the question to be asked is not, Is this a Man? but Is this a corporeal rational Being?”33 In an unpublished manuscript entitled “Some Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman,” Locke observes that “Politics contains two parts very different the one from the other, the one containing the original of societies and the rise and extent of political power, the other, the art of governing men in soci¬ ety.” He gives the impression that only the latter part is to be learned “by experi¬ ence and history,” while the former is grounded in more abstract reasonings; and he explicitly places the Two Treatises among the books concerned with the first, more theoretical part of political knowledge.34 Read in the light of the Essay's argument as characterized thus far, the premise of human species equality upon which Locke relies in the Second Treatise would then signify merely the abstract or nominal equality of “corporeal rational creatures” (see 7TII. 12, 57; STCE 31). The Second Treatise's premise of human species equality-in-rationality would stand, in other words—alongside what would thus appear the misnamed concept of the “state of nature”35—as a pure hypothesis of which Locke is neither able nor obliged to supply an empirical defense. If we read it this way, Locke’s proposed moral science would appear much more closely related to today’s antifoundationalist liberalism than to the “meta¬ physical” politics of the Enlightenment that antifoundationalists renounce. It would thus serve rather to radicalize than to solve the problem of the foundation of moral knowledge. According to the standard (rationalist) objections, a conception of morality as purely hypothetical and definitional—morality as merely a form of language-game—can demonstrate neither the nonrelative content nor the obligatory status of moral rules.36 Before condemning (or excusing) his theoretical inconsis¬ tency, however, one must question whether Locke in fact proposes such a concep¬ tion of morality. In the first place, Locke himself levels precisely these two objec¬ tions against a purely definitional science of morality. In an unpublished manu¬ script “Of Ethick in General” (originally designed as a conclusion to the Essay), he observes that by a doctrine providing “only the definitions of justice and tem¬ perance, theft and incontinency ... the force of morality is lost, and evaporates only into words, disputes, and niceties.”37 In the Essay, Locke presents the objec¬ tion to the relativism of such a conception in the words of an anticipated interlocu¬ tor: “if moral Knowledge be placed in the Contemplation of our own moral Ideas, and those, as other Modes, be of our own making, What strange Notions will there be of Justice and Temperance? What confusion of Vertues and Vices, if every one may make what Ideas of them he pleases?” (4.4.9; cf. 4.5.7-8). In fact, notwithstanding the seeming confidence with which he introduces the proposal, Locke significantly qualifies his assertions of the possibility of a genuine moral science. In the passage cited previously from the Essay's chapter “Of the Extent of Humane Knowledge,” Locke claims that “if duly considered, and pur¬ sued,” certain ideas would “afford such Foundations of our Duty and Rules of Action, as might place” morality among the demonstrative sciences, “to any one that will apply himself with the same Indifferency and Attention” to morality that

The Question of the Foundation

55

he devotes to mathematics (4.3.18). Soon thereafter, as he explains why attempts at demonstration in ethics have hitherto caused greater difficulties than those in mathematics, Locke iterates still more cautiously that a search with “indifferency” would bring us “nearer perfect Demonstration, than is commonly imagined” (4.3.20). And in his later chapter “Of the Improvement of Our Knowledge,” Locke professes similarly to “doubt not, but if a right method were taken,” that “a great part of Morality” might be demonstrated “to a considering Man” with a clarity equal to that of a mathematical demonstration (4.12.8).38 It is reasonable to suggest that by acknowledging that morality is at best an imperfectly demonstrable science, Locke acknowledges the two major objections to which his proposal may lie exposed. Although he makes no comment in the immediate context with respect to the problem of obligation, Locke clearly holds that the obligatory status of moral rules is undemonstrable. With some qualifica¬ tions to be considered later, Locke insists repeatedly that to be binding as law, natural or universal moral rules must proceed from a superior will and carry otherworldly sanctions (1.3.6; LAfol. 12). According to this reasoning, only firm knowledge of the existence of an afterlife can support a principle of moral obliga¬ tion proper. But as we have seen, Locke holds that the existence of an afterlife is altogether “beyond the Discovery of Reason” (4.18.7). It deserves emphasis, however, that in conjunction with his more forthright discussion in the Reason¬ ableness, Locke’s muted acknowledgment in the Essay of our incapacity to dem¬ onstrate the obligatory quality of moral rules signifies an acknowledgment not of any fatal inadequacy in moral rationalism, but only of its proper limits. Locke’s qualifying statements indicate that the undemonstrable portion of morality includes more than the matter of obligation. By acknowledging that the nature of the subject of morality is also undemonstrable, Locke directs us toward his response to the charge of relativism. In assessing Locke’s apparent claim that moral definitions are in the decisive respect products of the understanding, made “very arbitrarily,” one might reasonably ask, in the vigilant spirit of the Two Treatises: who frames and authorizes these definitions, and to what ends? Tully asserts that Locke’s political thought is framed and circumscribed by “the constitutive and regulative ideas of a given culture.”39 It is true that Locke occasionally counsels reliance upon common usage for the proper meanings of words (e.g., ECHU 3.6.51; 3.11.11; 4.4.10), and suggests accordingly that the function of philosophical usage is limited to the analytical clarification of words and ideas in common usage (cf. 3.9.3; 3.11.11). But as the Essay itself represents at best only a partially philosophical discourse,40 Locke presents what he under¬ stands to be only a truncated conception of philosophy in the passages in question. Immediately after recommending a generalized deference to common usage, he suggests a less confined conception of the nature of philosophy. He excepts from his counsel those who “in the Improvement of their Knowledge, come to have Ideas different from the vulgar and ordinary received ones” (3.11.12). Further, in contrast to Rawls and other present-day liberal theorists, Locke explicitly re¬ jects the appeal to common or community usage as the basis of moral discourse.

56

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Reliance upon such a standard would leave us unable to justify moral rules not only across cultures or moral communities but also within our own. Common usage provides “but a very uncertain Rule ... a very variable Standard” and “reduces it self at last to the Ideas of particular Men” (3.11.25; also 3.9.8).41 Reflection upon a proposed standard of common usage brings us ultimately to contemplate the possibility of a mental state of nature: a state of perfect mental freedom or free creativity, “like that of Babel” (3.6.28; cf. 3.6.51),42 inevitably involving such inconveniences as move sensible human beings to quit the state of nature in the Second Treatise's account.43 As a bulwark against such destructive relativism, Locke posits the idea of the “corporeal rational creature,” the subject of moral rules and the bearer of funda¬ mental rights. But as we have seen, Locke suggests that because the idea of the moral subject is a substance idea, we must accept its definition as a mere supposi¬ tion. Evidently, Locke intends some or most of the Essay’s readers to hold this idea of the moral subject unquestioningly, much as he would satisfy some or most of the Second Treatise's readers with the rhetoric of self-evident truths. But it is doubtful that Locke himself accepts the definition in this manner. First, to con¬ struct a moral system on the basis of an arbitrarily posited premise, however plausible, would hardly overcome the relativism that Locke explicitly rejects. It would align him with those whose moral theorizing he dismisses as the construc¬ tion of mere “Castles in the Air” (4.4.1). More decisively, his explicit qualifica¬ tions of his proposal of a science of morality suggest that, after all, Locke’s moral science depends not upon an a priori premise, but rather upon an empirically grounded assessment of the nature of those to whom that science is to apply. To the degree that we accept at face value Locke’s assertions of a strict dis¬ junction of moral and empirically grounded sciences, we lose sight of the prob¬ lematic duality inherent in the conception of the subject of law and morality as a “corporeal rational creature.” Absent a specific assessment of the relation of our corporeality to our rationality, this conception is morally indeterminate, and thus inadequate to define the subject of moral science. Locke’s inclusion of corporeal¬ ity in his proposed definition is of a piece with his claim that consciousness of pleasure and pain, along with intelligence, is essential to moral personhood (2.27.17, 26).44 But more than the mere coexistence of intelligence with sentience and passion is required to qualify us as moral beings. If our intelligence functions merely to serve, rather than to regulate or direct our natural inclination toward happiness, then it would rather qualify us as nonmoral or antimoral than as moral beings. To repeat, “Principles of Action indeed there are lodged in Men’s Appe¬ tites, but . . . if they were left to their full swing, they would carry Men to the over-turning of all Morality” (1.3.13). In part for this reason, I maintain that in acknowledging the contingency of his proposed moral science upon the “indifferency,” consideration, and attentiveness of its prospective subjects, Locke is doing more than appealing to his readers to observe common standards of intellectual decency or probity in their moral rea¬ soning. He is signaling the dependence of his apparently a priori moral science

The Question of the Foundation

57

upon a prior empirical inquiry. With a view in particular toward measuring actual moral subjects receptiveness or resistance to law, Lockean moral science requires an assessment of the degree to which it is in the nature of a being corporeal as well as rational to resist “indifferency,” to fall subject to “Vices, Passions, and domineering Interests” or to “the Desire of Esteem, Riches, or Power” in one’s practical reasonings (4.3.18, 20). If we ascribe to Locke a purely abstract, empiri¬ cally indeterminate moral doctrine, we leave unexplained and unjustified his tacit inference from the moral or jural equality of the Essay’s abstract class of “corpo¬ real rational” beings to the presumptive equality of actual human beings in the Second Treatise. Why should we presume that the moral and jural equality of rational beings or moral persons obtains also among the members of the class of actual human beings? To defenders of the “abstract” reading of Locke’s moral science, this may seem a relatively trivial issue. The general, minimally sufficient capacity for moral agency among human beings may seem, if not an a priori truth, at least a fact visible to commonsense observation, requiring no extraordinary empirical study. Thus Simmons asserts that “To the extent that [Locke’s] derivation of natural rights relies upon facts about human nature, it relies only upon relatively uncontroversial and extremely general claims.”45 Further, so far as no empirical science can precisely identify in advance which individuals will fall outside or transgress the boundaries of moral personhood, the Second Treatise’s apparent premise of presumptive rationality or personhood may seem justified. Such ap¬ pearances notwithstanding, we shall see more clearly in chapters four and six that Locke is very far from accepting the existence of an effective capacity for moral agency among the generality of humankind as a natural, unproblematically observ¬ able fact. And whatever the significance of the dependence of Locke’s premise of human equality in moral agency upon an empirical inquiry, an additional, equally fundamental issue remains to be considered. Even granted the premise of human equality in moral agency or personhood, we would not necessarily be entitled to infer the Lockean principle of fundamental human moral or jural equality. To establish that human beings are equal in basic moral personhood is not yet to establish that we are equal in the morally decisive respects. Why should we grant to the fact of equality in moral personhood a status of moral primacy, relative to other morally relevant respects in which members of the class of corporeal rational beings may be unequal to each other? While Locke clearly asserts the equality of moral persons and thus denies the natural right of any person to rule another, he also maintains that the aim of moral action is the achievement of genuine happiness (see ECHU 2.21.31-71; 2.27.17, 25-26; 2.28.4ff.; TTII.57).46 Knowledge of happiness is or would be a morally relevant quality for Locke. Now is the teaching of, say, Plato and Aristotle self-evidently false and unworthy of consideration, that corporeal rational beings are in fact unequal in their capacities for knowing the nature of their true happiness, and that the main implication of this inequality is a more aristocratic conception of natural right? If Locke is to maintain his principle of equality against this fundamental

58

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alternative, he must show either that we are generally equal in the capacity for knowing our happiness or that our inequality in this capacity is of secondary moral relevance—that our achievement of genuine happiness is better served by subordi¬ nating or obscuring rather than elevating that inequality in our moral consider¬ ation. In either case, to show the nonexistence or practical dangerousness of this sort of inequality requires a very substantial empirical argument, involving explo¬ rations of the status of corporeal-rational or human beings as a natural or conven¬ tional kind; of the sort of happiness proper to such beings; of the nature and limits of our powers to apprehend our true happiness and to devote ourselves to the achievement of our own happiness and that of others; and of the natural or cultural conditions in which we are to seek our happiness. Despite his occasional statements to the contrary, Locke is perfectly aware of the dependence of his moral and political science upon an empirical inquiry, and his procedure in elaborating that science throughout his major works reflects that awareness. At the close of Book I of the Essay, Locke warns his readers “not to expect undeniably cogent demonstrations” unless they are willing to grant him his “Principles.” But he makes clear that if they are undemonstrable, those principles are not therefore unquestionable. At the bottom of Locke’s “Edifice” lies not a set of arbitrary axioms, capable of supporting only a “Castle in the Air,” but rather a set of premises substantiated by his own and others’ “unprejudiced Experience, and Observation” (1.4.25). The complex idea of a rights-bearing, corporeal-ratio¬ nal creature is not the product of a pure act of mental construction or creativity, but is formed in an act of abstraction that is regulated by real experience. The main sources of this experience are introspection and a wide-ranging historicalanthropological inquiry. To substantiate the Essay's account of our mental and moral faculties, Locke appeals to “the History of Mankind,” as well as to what “Every one, I think, finds in himself” (1.3.2; 2.21.7). In the Two Treatises, along with the Essay and virtually all his other major works, Locke draws upon a wideranging reading of human history to provide summary accounts of the develop¬ ment of human society and civilization, along the way making numerous refer¬ ences to human nature and to the natural power of various human passions.471 suggest that this somewhat scattered historical account represents the object of the “other Enquiry” to which Locke cryptically alludes, whereby we can measure the truth or falsity of our moral rules (ECHU 2.28.20). Finally, the thesis that Locke’s seemingly abstract reasoning about morality and justice is in fact based upon a submerged empirical-historical argument may appear vulnerable to an immediate and familiar objection. Even assuming the possibility of achieving a defensible understanding of human nature and the natural human condition, one might yet question the normative significance of such knowledge. As Locke himself observes, “an argument from what has been, to what should of right be, has no great force” (7TII.103; cf. 1.57). This question appears especially pertinent in view of Locke’s reading of human history. Despite his provisional appeals to the premise of a moral design in nature and human nature, Locke maintains from the beginning of his intellectual career that the law

The Question of the Foundation

59

of nature or the true moral rules are “hidden in the darkness.” A powerful indica¬ tor of this is the deep moral dissensus not only among the law’s individual inter¬ preters, but more importantly among historical human societies (LAfols. 34, 16, 62-81; cf. 7TI.56-59; ECHU 1.3.9-12). Because “the noise of War . . . makes so great a part of the History of Mankind,” Locke recommends that history be taught with special care, lest young pupils be misled “to think Slaughter the laud¬ able Business of Mankind, and the most Heroick of Vertues” (7TII. 175; STCE 116). In an unpublished essay “Of Study,” he recommends the reading of history specifically to one who hath well settled in his mind the principles of morality, and knows how to make a judgement on the actions of men. ”48 On the basis of this and like evidence, Jeremy Waldron reasons in an elegant and perceptive article that Locke’s contractarianism, broadly conceived to include his concepts of the state of nature and natural rights, functions as a moral template superimposed on his historical-anthropological account of the origin and develop¬ ment of political society. “Since the moral categories we have are necessary for the study of history, they cannot themselves be the product of historical study. Their basis lies in reason or ... in the ahistorical arguments of natural theol¬ ogy. ”49 In denying the force of arguments from history to right, however, and in insisting upon the moral errancy of human history, Locke does not affirm any categorical separation of “facts” from “values,” or of historical from moral in¬ quiry. Eschewing the responses that would characterize Kantian and historicist variants of liberalism, Locke does not abstract altogether from history in a search for a purely transcendent moral doctrine, just as he does not collapse morality into history or reduce the rational to the actual in moral and political life. Rather, he continues to affirm the accessibility of the true moral rules or the principles of natural right to unassisted reason, with the proviso—much understated, in impor¬ tant respects—that the discovery of those principles requires “study” (7TII.12, 124). And as we have seen, contrary to the opinion of Waldron, the sort of study to which Locke refers must proceed beyond natural theology or the abstract fact of reason. Locke’s arguments concerning those subjects are not self-contained, but instead lead us to search for a historical argument as the basis of his moral and political science. Although Waldron’s reading goes astray in strictly separating Locke’s moral and historical arguments, it is useful in underlining the need for a refined under¬ standing of Locke’s historical argument. The apparent “nonimmanence”50 of the true moral principles in historical practice or in uneducated human inclinations does not compel Locke to sever moral from historical inquiry, but it does compel him to reject the uncritical identification of the Ought and the Is, the morally rational and the actual, and to recognize the extreme difficulty of the necessary task of locating the basis of the principles of natural right in human history. In moral science as in mining, “that wealth which has been hidden in the darkness must be excavated with great labor” (LN fol. 34). The principles of natural right are indeed accessible to unassisted reason, but they are not accessible to unim¬ proved reason, and their basis is not accessible to uncritical, commonsense obser-

60

Chapter Two

vation. To locate the basis of those principles in history, reason requires improve¬ ment by method. As we shall see, in the particular study of morality as well as in the study of nature in general, the tools whereby critical Lockean reason pene¬ trates the surfaces of things are essentially the tools of Baconian science.

Conclusion Taking seriously Locke’s insistence that the basis and substance of the principles of justice are accessible to human reason, I have examined in this chapter more specifically what form of rationalism Locke’s thought ultimately takes. Whether we proceed from the premise of human species equality or divine workmanship, and whether we understand the latter as a dictate of positive revelation or natural religion, we come to see that Locke’s arguments concerning the substance of morality depend in common upon a nonconventional, historically based account of human nature and the natural human condition.51 This general answer to the question of the nature or type of Locke’s political rationalism raises further questions. By observing that Locke is fully aware of the dependence of his moral principles upon a partially submerged historical argu¬ ment, I mean to suggest that Locke’s insistence throughout much of the Essay upon a strict methodological separation of moral from natural science represents a deliberate rhetorical exaggeration, as does the closely related distinction between the abstract, normative-theoretical principles of political science and the histori¬ cally grounded prudential art of governing.52 The question therefore arises con¬ cerning the rhetorical strategy that informs this exaggeration. Why is Locke so reticent and ambiguous with respect to the dependence of his moral and political science upon an understanding of nature? An important part of the answer, I believe, appears in the suggestions of Leo Strauss and Quentin Skinner: Especially in cases involving moral and political principles, to attempt to effect a significant innovation is a difficult and possibly dangerous undertaking, requiring a high degree of rhetorical delicacy and a special facility for making the new appear as a continuation of the old.53 Locke’s emphatically nontraditional account of natural science might well carry nontraditional moral implications. In that case, by exag¬ gerating the independence of his moral-political science, Locke would render it palatable to his morally traditional readers, and thus clear a space of relative freedom to deliver his vigorous attack upon scholastic or premodem natural sci¬ ence. Alternatively, even if Locke’s natural science supports a substantively tradi¬ tional morality, it may yet innovate in rendering moral principles matters of exper¬ imental probability as opposed to demonstration. Locke’s rhetorical separation of the two would then allow him, via his “transcendent”54 or theocentric natural-law arguments, to appease some readers’ desire for certainty in matters in which, in truth, we cannot achieve strict certainty. In this case, we would have reason to qualify the insistent anti-authoritarianism that appears most prominently in the Essay's critique of innatism. The point here is not necessarily to accuse Locke of

The Question of the Foundation

61

hypocrisy or dogmatism, or to assimilate him to those among our contemporaries who urge us to “question Authority”—meaning, now, also to question human rationality—only so far as it appears to threaten egalitarianism. It is instead to recommend a spirit of openness to the possibility that Locke has good reasons for declining to encourage the radical public questioning or deconstruction of the premise of human equality-in-rationality. As we shall see, notwithstanding the often perfunctory or presumptuous character of his suggestions concerning the basis of his political thought, it becomes clear especially in the Essay that Locke does engage in a relatively muted but deeply radical, genuinely philosophic ques¬ tioning of the nature of human reason and its relation to the moral principle of human equality. On this reading, therefore, the key to the Lockean response to the charge of doctrinairism lies in understanding why Locke’s anti-authoritarianism leads him to refrain from an excessively probing, direct, public scrutiny of egali¬ tarian rationalism. A full answer to the question of Locke’s rhetorical strategy, however, must await the answers to more immediately pressing questions. To demonstrate that Locke’s moral-political science requires a basis in a nonconventional, empiricalhistorical argument is not, of course, to demonstrate that Locke actually supplies such an argument. Locke may seem indeed to undermine the possibility of such an argument, by contending in the Essay that our ideas of the natures of things are not grounded in the real natures of things, but are instead in the decisive respect conventional. Before attempting to reconstruct the specific historical account in which Locke’s abstract, corporeal-rational creatures take shape as the naturally, properly free and equal bearers of fundamental rights, we need to know more about the conception of science that Locke proposes for improving our powers of historical observation. To reconsider the purpose and effect of Locke’s critical account of natural science is the task of the following chapter.

Notes 1. Citations of Locke’s works will appear in the text, abbreviated as follows. Of the Conduct of the Understanding will appear as CU, followed by paragraph number. The Correspondence of John Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976) will appear as CJL, followed by letter number. “A Discourse of Miracles” will be cited by page numbers in The Reasonableness of Christianity, ed. I. M. Ramsey (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford Univer¬ sity Press, 1958). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding will appear as ECHU, followed by book, chapter, and paragraph numbers. A Letter Concerning Toleration will appear as LCT, followed by page number from the James Tully edition (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983). Questions Concerning the Law of Nature will appear as LN, followed by folio numbers; translations are from the edition of Robert Horwitz et al. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990). On the Reasonableness of Christianity will appear as RC, followed by paragraph number in the George Ewing edition (Washington, D.C.: Gateway, 1965). Some Thoughts Concerning Education will appear as STCE, followed by paragraph number. Two Tracts on Government will appear as ETG or LTG (English or Latin tract), followed by page number from the Philip Abrams edition (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

62

Chapter Two

sity Press, 1967). Two Treatises of Government will appear as TT, followed by treatise and paragraph numbers. The respective editions of The Works of John Locke will appear as Works (1823) or as Works (1877), followed by volume and page numbers. Papers in the Lovelace Collection of the Papers of John Locke at the Bodleian Library will be cited by manuscript location, volume, and folio number (e.g., MS Locke c. 33, fol. 36). All itali¬ cizing indicates Locke’s original emphasis unless otherwise noted. 2. Sterling Lamprecht, The Moral and Political Philosophy of John Locke (New York: Russell and Russell, 1918), 141; Harold Laski, Political Thought from Locke to Bentham (New York: Henry Holt, 1920), 29; Richard Aaron, John Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 270ff; Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), 208; Peter Laslett, “Introduction,” 59ff; J. W. Gough, John Locke’s Politi¬ cal Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 138-44; Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, 530-91. 3. Laslett, “Introduction,” 82. 4. “Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our Conduct” {ECHU 1.1.6). 5. Laslett, “Introduction,” 84. 6. See ECHU 3.9.3ff. and the discussion in Strauss, Natural Right, 220ff. 7. On innatism as the basis of knowledge of Lockean natural right, see C. E. Vaughan, Studies in the History of Political Philosophy Before and After Rousseau (New York: Russell and Russell, 1925), 139. On self-evidence as the basis, see Morton White, The Philosophy of the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 1059. Yolton, “Locke on the Law of Nature,” 479-87, seems to argue that Locke appeals both to a modified innatism and a principle of self-evidence. 8. Cf. Grenville Wall, “Locke’s Attack on Innate Knowledge,” in Locke on Human Understanding, ed. I. C. Tipton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 19-24. 9. In his early, unpublished Questions Concerning the Law of Nature, Locke denies still more emphatically the innatism or self-evidence of the law of nature, observing that the laws of nature are “hidden in the darkness” and come to sight only as the yield of consider¬ able philosophic labor (fol. 34; also fols. 16, 37-46). 10. On the authoritarian implications of the principle of self-evidence or intuition, see White, Philosophy of the American Revolution, 14-20. 11. Strauss, Natural Right, 225-26. 12. On the self-evidence of deductions, Locke holds that “in every step Reason makes in demonstrative Knowledge, there is an intuitive Knowledge of that Agreement or Dis¬ agreement, it seeks, with the next intermediate Idea, which it uses as a Proof’ {ECHU 4.2.7). 13. See Dworetz, Unvarnished Doctrine, passim. 14. On the maker’s or creator’s right to his product, see 1.50-54,11.27, 40-48. On the importance of the workmanship argument to Locke’s intention, see Tully, Discourse on Property, 3-4, 34-51; Colman, Locke’s Moral Philosophy, 187-90; Ian Shapiro, The Evolu¬ tion of Rights in Liberal Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 96-108; Ashcraft, Locke’s Two Treatises, 35-47; Huyler, Locke in America, 36-37, 79-100. 15. Locke proclaims the truth or the authenticity of Christianity as the positive revelation of God’s will also atRC237, 239, 240; Works 4.96, 6.144-45, 356, 424. He declares that the New Testament contains or provides the ground for the true morality at Works 1823, 3.296; STCE 185; RC 239-45. 16. See Summa Contra Gentiles, 1.6. 17. I thank Professor Doug Kries for suggesting that I call attention to this fact.

The Question of the Foundation

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18. Cf. RC 237, 240, with Michael Zuckert, “Locke and the Problem of Civil Reli¬ gion,” in The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, ed. Robert Horwitz (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986), 198. An extension of this argument appears in Michael Rabieh, “The Reasonableness of Locke, or the Questionableness of Christianity,” Journal of Politics 53, no. 4 (November 1991): 949-50. 19. Richard Sherlock and Roger Barrus, “The Problem of Religion in Liberalism,” Interpretation 20, no. 3 (Spring 1993): 297, and nl5. Content to assume that revelation is the ground of reason for Locke, Tully offers a remarkably cursory and credulous reading of the Discourse on Miracles (An Approach to Political Philosophy, 228-31, 313). m 20 • Dunn- Political Thought, 80, 187-99, 263; also Locke, 66, 84. Cf. Richard Ashcraft, Faith and Knowledge in Locke s Philosophy,” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Yolton, 214-23; Laslett, “Introduction,” 88-89; Spellman, Locke and the Problem of Depravity, 126-29. Ashcraft later contends that Locke never held a rationalist ethic, always affirming the superiority of revelation to reason (Locke’s Two Treatises, 256, 267nl6). 21. See Colman, John Locke’s Moral Philosophy, 138-40; Michael Ayers, Locke (Lon¬ don: Routledge, 1991), vol. I, 123-24, vol. II, 190; Marshall, John Locke, 436-47. 22. Ayers, Locke, vol. n, 190; Rabieh, “The Reasonableness of Locke,” 942ff. 23. Published by Sargentich, “Locke and Ethical Theory,” 26-28. 24. Cf. TTII.6, 25. As Pangle points out, Locke ceases at a certain point in the First Treatise to treat Scripture as an independent authority, thereafter stressing the conformity of the Biblical teaching to the law of nature (Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 149). See also Adam Wolfson, “Tolerance and Relativism: The Locke-Proast Exchange,” Review of Politics 59, no. 2 (Spring 1997): 223-24. 25. Cf. ECHU2.21.51 with the fragment “Morality,” in Sargentich, “Locke and Ethical Theory,” 26: “Morality is the rule of mans actions for the atteining happynesse.” 26. Harvey C. Mansfield, “On the Political Character of Property in Locke,” in Powers, Possessions, and Freedom, ed. Alkis Kontos (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 33ff. 27. Zuckert, “Locke and the Problem of Civil Religion,” 182-83, 201-03. 28. Laslett, “Introduction,” 81-87. 29. Tully, Discourse on Property, 26. 30. Locke declines in his brief account of the Essay’s history to disclose the fact that the “very remote” subject of the originating discussion concerned ‘the Principles of morality, and reveald Religion’ (ECHU “Epistle to the Reader,” 7; Nidditch, “Foreword,” xix). Similarly, he organizes the work so as to indicate a virtually complete abstraction from moral questions. No chapter heading in the entire work announces a direct concern with moral issues, and the discussions of morality that do arise are commonly presented as peripheral to the main topic under consideration. At 2.21.72, Locke expresses a hope that he “shall be pardon’d this Digression” into the question of human liberty, which occupies virtually the whole of the Essay’s single longest chapter. Cf. 2.28.4-17. Nidditch refers aptly to Locke’s “ironic masking of his priority of concern with conduct over scientific inquisitiveness” (xviii). Cf. Colman, John Locke’s Moral Philosophy, 1. 31. Christopher Aronson and Douglas Lewis, “Locke on Mixed Modes, Knowledge, and Substances,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 8 (1970): 195-96; Eugene Miller, “Locke on the Meaning of Political Language: The Teaching of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding,’’ Political Science Reviewer 9 (Fall 1979): 178-84. 32. Thus Hobbes: “science is allowed to men through the former kind of a priori dem¬ onstration only of those things whose generation depends on the will of men themselves” [De Homine 10.4; cf. 10.5, also De Cive 18.4. In Man and Citizen, ed. Bernard Gert (New

64

Chapter Two

York: Humanities Press, 1978), 41-43, 372-75] . 33. John Locke’s Liberalism, 30. 34. Published in Axtell, Educational Writings, 400. 35. Dunn, Political Thought, 97-106; Jeremy Waldron, “John Locke: Social Contract Versus Political Anthropology,” Review of Politics 51, no. 3 (Winter 1989): 3-28. 36. See James Gibson, “Locke’s Theory of Mathematical Knowledge and a Possible Science of Ethics,” Mind 5 (1896): 38, 50; Sterling Lamprecht, Moral and Political Phi¬ losophy of John Locke, 78; Richard Aaron, John Locke, 261-64; Wolfgang Von Leyden, “Introduction” to John Locke: Essays on the Law of Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 53ff.; Ashcraft, “Faith and Knowledge,” 21 Off.; Geraint Parry, John Locke (Lon¬ don: Allen and Unwin, 1978), 34; Miller, “Political Language,” 181; Jeffrey Wallin, “John Locke and the American Founding,” in Natural Right and Political Right, eds. Thomas Silver and Peter Schramm (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984), 148-58. 37. In The Life of John Locke, ed. Lord Peter King (London: Colburn and Bentley, 1830), 311. 38. Gibson notes the caution in Locke’s formulations concerning the possibility of a demonstrative moral science, but he seems nonetheless to hold that Locke is only dimly aware of the difficulties that such a pure science would entail (“Locke’s Theory,” 50, 58). 39. Discourse on Property, 24; more generally, 3-34. The degree to which Tully still holds this view is unclear; see An Approach to Political Philosophy, 292ff. 40. See Zuckert, “Fools and Knaves.” 41. See Locke’s reply to Lowde, in the note to ECHU 2.28.11 (ed. Nidditch). 42. Colman, Locke’s Moral Philosophy, 107-37. 43. Consider Budziszewski’s observation of the essential unity, whatever their more superficial differences, of contemporary liberals and communitarians in their affirmation of the principle of ethical neutralism (True Tolerance, xiv-xv, 5-6). 44. Ayers, Locke, II, 188-89. 45. Lockean Theory of Rights, 105. Cf. Rawls, Theory of Justice, 506-09. 46. Recall Locke’s undated fragment “Morality,” in Sargentich, “Locke and Ethical Theory,” 26. See Colman, Locke’s Moral Philosophy, 7, 42, 68-73; Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics, 151-68. 47. 7TI.10, 54, 86, 88, 97; 11.13, 67, 92, 143; cf. STCE 34, 100, 103, 106-07, 119, 123, 148. In “Some Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman,” Locke claims that one can learn of human nature “chiefly from experience, and next to that from a judicious reading of history,” as well as from certain classic texts such as Aristotle’s Rhetoric (in Educational Writings, ed. Axtell, 403). Mark Glat observes properly that the Second Treatise displays a greater concern for human history than for English history, and that the aspiration toward a genuinely historical analysis of politics is central to Locke’s thought [“John Locke’s Historical Sense,” Review of Politics 43 (1981): 4, 15], 48. In Axtell, Educational Writings, 422; see also 409-10. 49. Waldron, “Social Contract Versus Political Anthropology,” 18 (emphasis original). 50. I borrow the usage from Michael Zuckert, Natural Rights, 187-288. 51. Cf. Mansfield: Locke “leaves one trail for the sceptical and another for the pious, the latter more plainly marked but leading in circles, so that eventually the pious will have to follow the sceptics’ trail if they wish to get anywhere” (“Political Character,” 29). 52. Despite her stress on the distinction between normative and empirical political science. Grant also is compelled to attribute to Locke the opinion that “Nature is the appropriate standard” for the formation of our moral ideas (John Locke’s Liberalism, 37; also 21-22, 37-41, 48).

The Question of the Foundation

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53. Strauss, Natural Right, 206-09; Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding,” 32-35, and “Some Problems,” 286-89, 293-301. Cf. Cox, Locke on War and Peace, 11. 54. Again the usage belongs to Zuckert, Natural Rights, 207ff.

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.

*

.

Chapter Three

Natural Science and Natural History In the “Introduction” to the Essay, Locke promises to describe the operations of the human understanding on the basis of a “Historical, plain Method” of inquiry (1.1.2). He adopts this method, which governs his approach to the study of nature at large aS well as his description of the workings of the understanding, in opposi¬ tion to what he considers the naive naturalism characteristic of premodem science. Among the aims of this chapter is to show, contrary to a common objection, that Locke’s reliance as a political thinker upon an account of nature is far from naive. Its central aim, however, is to address a more challenging objection, according to which Locke’s emphatic rejection of premodem naturalism sends him careering to the opposite extreme, to the adoption of a radically conventionalist position that would effectively undermine any appeal to nature as the basis of his moral-politi¬ cal thought. I intend to show, first, that whereas Locke rejects the premodem doctrine of natural species as inconsistent with the manner in which the understanding actually forms species ideas, he does not simply substitute for this older naturalism a thoroughgoing modem conventionalism. Rather, he recommends his fundamen¬ tally Baconian historical method as the basis of an alternative, partly natural and partly conventional science that is more epistemologically cautious and defensible than the older conception. Yet one cannot deny that, fully cognizant of the danger of arbitrariness inherent in the conventionalist view, Locke places great rhetorical emphasis on the conventionalist element of science properly understood. I there¬ fore intend, second, to recover the reasoning that persuades Locke to lead his readers to the very brink of arbitrariness, in his epistemological rejection of the doctrine of natural species and especially in his employment of the “corpuscular67

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ian hypothesis.” In order to stimulate genuine inquiry, Locke seeks to impress upon his readers the necessity and possibility of progress in science. We must come to understand the ultimately insuperable inadequacy of our ideas of natural beings, without losing sight of their natural bases. Locke’s natural-historical inquiry represents a delicate attempt to preserve a commonsense understanding of the nonarbitrariness of our ideas, while yet promoting a spirit of openness to scientific progress grounded in an awareness of the incompleteness of those ideas. As we shall see in this chapter and the next, this complex, natural-historical approach to the study of natural beings in general not only provides the essential context for understanding but also raises far-reaching questions about the specific account of human nature in the state of nature upon which Locke’s political thought decisively rests.

Locke’s Epistemological Critique of Premodern Science In the Essay’s “Epistle to the Reader,” Locke announces an apparently modest intention to perform only a critical, preparatory task: ‘“tis Ambition enough to be employed as an Under-Labourer in clearing ground a little, and removing some of the Rubbish, that lies in the way to Knowledge” (10). Locke may appear, however, to discharge the Essay’s ground-clearing task in Book I’s famous refuta¬ tion of a general doctrine of innatism, and then to proceed in Book II and thereaf¬ ter to elaborate a more constructive account of the operation of the human under¬ standing. In fact, the Essay does incorporate constructive as well as critical arguments, but it clearly does not confine the latter to the first book. Locke’s refutation of innatism is only a particular strand of a larger, more general critique, extending throughout the Essay, of the notion that the human understanding is well provided by nature to achieve scientific knowledge of the world external to it. The most far-reaching element of this larger critique is Locke’s rejection of the premodem, teleological, Aristotelian-Scholastic doctrine of “substantial forms” or natural species, according to which not the human understanding, but instead “Nature sets the Boundaries of the Species of Things,” generating particular beings to partake in one of a finite number of real essences “and so become of this or that Species” (3.6.30; 3.3.17; also 3.3.9; 3.6.14, 24; 4.4.13; 4.6.4). This doctrine of natural species not only fails to explain how we actually form general ideas but also actively hinders the advancement of science. A brief introduction to the fundamentals of Locke’s empiricist epistemology will help clarify these points. For the Lockean empiricist, ideas are the constitu¬ ents of knowledge. “Idea,” in Locke’s usage, refers somewhat loosely to “what¬ ever is meant by Phantasm, Notion, Species, or whatever it is, which the Mind can be employ’d about in thinking” (1.1.8).1 At his most obvious point of depar¬ ture from the opinion of the natural providedness of the human understanding, Locke maintains that no notions or principles are inborn; the understanding is at birth or prior to experience wholly unfurnished, “white Paper, void of all Charac¬ ters” (2.1.2; also 1.2.15). Ideas appear to us only via the experiences of sensation

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and reflection, and can be either simple or complex in character. Simple ideas, in Locke’s account, are truly the basic building blocks or “the Materials of all our Knowledge” (2.2.2). They are “unmixed” or “uncompounded,” incapable of analysis into any simpler ideas, and hence incapable of definition. The mind can neither create nor destroy them (2.2.1, 2; also 3.4.4, 7, 11). They are the only givens, the only objects of immediate perception, the mind’s only points of direct access to the external world. Complex ideas are ideas “made up of several simple ones put together.” The mind not only perceives simple ideas, but also “labors” upon them, employing its powers “either to unite them together, or to set them by one another, or wholly separate them,” in order to make further ideas (2.12.1). By its own industry, the mind progresses from simplicity to complexity, ultimately acquiring a great abundance of ideas, virtually infinite in number and variety (2.12.3; 2.1.2). Complex ideas are produced through the mental activities of combining, comparing, and abstracting. All complex ideas are either modes, substances, or relations. Modes or modal ideas are complex ideas that refer not to things sup¬ posed to exist independently in themselves, but instead to the qualities or attributes or modifications of such things. In Locke’s definition, they are complex ideas that “are considered as Dependences on, or Affections of Substances” (2.12.4). Substance-ideas are ideas that refer to things to which we ascribe independent existence. They are “such combinations of simple Ideas, as are taken to represent distinct particular things subsisting by themselves” (2.12.6). Ideas of relation derive from the power of the understanding to “carry any Idea, as it were, beyond it self ... to see how it stands in conformity to any other” (2.25.1). The difficulties inherent in the doctrine of natural species or substantial forms begin with our inability to render a clear account of our ideas of substances. We remain unaware of the need for such an account, so long as we are unable or unwilling to recognize the priority of modes to substances, and more fundamen¬ tally, of simple to complex ideas, in our experience. Viewed from a perspective of epistemological realism or common sense, among the most arresting claims of Lockean empiricism is the proposition that we immediately perceive not objects as such, but instead only combinations of discrete ideas. As we are unable to conceive of an effect independent of a cause, or an action or passion independent of an agent or patient, so we are unable to imagine how simple ideas can subsist by themselves. When we perceive a simple idea of color, or of solidity, or of pleasure or pain, for instance, we find it necessary to suppose the existence of some being or thing that bears the quality of solidity or of the given color, or feels the pleasure or pain. When we observe that several simple ideas “go constantly together” or coexist over time, we suppose that such ideas exist as common qualities of a single object (2.23.1). By an unconscious mental reflex, we “accus¬ tom ourselves, to suppose some Substratum, wherein [the simple ideas that we perceive] do subsist, and from which they do result” (2.23.1, 2). We form ideas of spiritual substances in the same way that we form ideas of corporeal substances (2.23.5; but cf. 4.3.6).

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This common supposition is not necessarily unreasonable, according to Locke. Notwithstanding his observation that the inconceivability of a given proposition is insufficient to justify assent to the contrary proposition (4.3.6), Locke allows that it is “past Doubt, there must be some real Constitution, on which any Collection of simple Ideas co-existing, must depend” (3.3.15; 3.6.13). But when we attempt to render an account of the idea of a substance in which a given collection of coexisting qualities coheres, we can say no more than that it is “something ... I know not what” (2.23.2, 15; 1.4.18). If our ideas of substances are to be more than mere indeterminate suppositions, we must be able to identify the particular constitutions in which those ideas cohere. We must be able to identify the causal relationships that make ontologically necessary the unions of particular sets of ideas in substances (2.31.6). And this we cannot do, according to Locke, for we are incapable of strict knowledge of cause-effect relations. In the brief chapter devoted specifically to these relations, Locke explains that we acquire ideas of cause and effect as inferences from the observation “that several particular, both Qualities, and Substances begin to exist; and that they receive this their Existence, from the due Application and Operation of some other Being” (2.26.1). He indicates in the immediate sequel and elsewhere, however, that such inferences are in the strict sense “experimental” rather than “scientifical” as we draw them “without knowing the manner of that Operation” whereby one being brings into existence a new quality or substance (4.3.26; 2.26.2). Because we are “destitute of Faculties to attain” knowledge of “the internal Constitution, and true Nature of things,” we can acquire “no other Idea of those Substances, than what is framed by a collection of those simple Ideas which are to be found in them” (2.23.32, 3). A further implication is that our ideas of substances are necessarily “inadequate,” in that they can never provide more than a “partial, or incomplete representation of those Archetypes to which they are referred” (2.31.1, 6). They are inadequate because it is simply impossible for us to render a comprehensive accounting of all the qualities or powers of any given substance. “[Wjhatever Collection of simple Ideas [the mind] makes of any Substance that exists, it cannot be sure, that it exactly answers all that are in that Substance” (2.31.13; cf. 2.31.10; 3.6.19; 3.9.13; 4.6.14). These fundamental incapacities limit in like manner our knowledge of the sorts or species of substances. In our ordinary observations, we find not only particular sets of coexisting ideas but also patterns of coexistence. By “collecting such Combinations of simple Ideas, as are by Experience and Observation of Men’s Senses taken notice of to exist together,” we form not only ideas of particular substances but also ideas of “particular sorts of Substances” (2.23.3; cf. 2.23.6, 7, 8; 2.31.6; 3.3.13; 3.6.1). As with particular substances, our knowledge of sorts or species is experimental or historical, not scientific in the strict sense. Just as we are ignorant of the internal, causal constitutions of particular substances, so we are ignorant of the causal natural bases for classifying particular substances as mem¬ bers of common species. But whereas Locke makes no explicit objection to the supposition of a particular substance in which a given set of coexisting ideas

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subsists, he advances a sustained and vigorous objection to the supposition that nature does or can supply our ideas of the species of substances. Acknowledging that “there is nothing more ordinary, than that Men should attribute the sorts of Things” to nature’s design rather than to human art (2.31.6; 3.10.21), Locke nonetheless contends that the common supposition of natural species is “wholly useless” and has “very much perplexed the Knowledge of natural Things” (3.3.17; cf. 2.31.8; 3.3.13; 3.5.16; 3.6.50; 4.4.17; 4.6.4). The difficulty in the premodem doctrine of natural species lies primarily not in the fact that individual observers vary in their species ideas (3.3.14, 3.6.26), but rather in the fact that nature’s production of things provides us with no means for correcting our ideas so as to achieve scientifically precise definitions of natural species. In the Essay's chapter “Of the Names of Substances,” Locke sets forth the conditions necessary for classifying substantial beings, “according to the usual supposition,” into natural species: First. . . that Nature, in the production of Things, always designs them to partake of certain regulated established Essences. . . . Secondly, It would be necessary to know, whether Nature always attains that Essence, it designs. . . . Thirdly, It ought to be determined, whether those we call Monsters, be really a distinct Species. . . . Fourthly, The real Essences of these Things, which we distinguish into Species . . . ought to be

known. (3.6.14-18)

With respect to the first issue, whether nature designs things to partake of certain regulated essences, Locke comments immediately that this proposition “would need some better explication, before it can fully be assented to” (3.6.15). Elsewhere, in a discussion of the various degrees and modifications of thinking, he remarks that “the Operations of Agents will easily admit of intention and remission; but the Essences of things, are not conceived capable of any such variation” (2.19.4). With respect to the essences of things, Locke insists that nature’s design must be immanent in the actuality of nature’s production.2 For the doctrine of natural species to warrant our confident assent, in other words, the boundaries between species of natural beings must be perfectly clear and precise, with each member of any given species manifesting constantly and invariantly all the properties essential to that species: “it is as impossible, that two Things, partaking exactly of the same real Essence, should have different Properties, as that two Figures partaking in the same real Essence of a Circle, should have different Properties” (3.3.17; 3.6.8). Thus Locke’s first and second conditions of assent to the doctrine of natural species merge. We can be sure that nature designs things to partake of certain real essences, only upon observing that nature actually produces clearly and precisely bounded species of things. A major difficulty for this doctrine therefore arises from the fact that nature does not produce precisely bounded species. Particular beings that we regard as members of common species often display with consider¬ able variance the qualities or powers supposedly essential to those species. Locke comments that the “irregular and monstrous Births, that in divers sorts of animals

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have been observed, will always give us reason to doubt of one, or both of these” conditions of assent (3.6.16). The irregularity of nature’s production clearly holds a special fascination for Locke, as it had for Bacon.3 Professing an intention to show the probability that there exist “more Species of intelligent Creatures above us, than there are of sensible and material below us,” Locke insinuates this broader theme as well, as he offers a provocative restatement4 of the traditional conception of earthly cre¬ ation as a great chain-of-being: All quite down from us, the descent is by easy steps, and a continued series of Things, that in each remove, differ very little one from the other. There are Fishes that have Wings, and are not Strangers to the airy Region: and there are some Birds, that are Inhabitants of the Water. . . . There are Animals so near of kin both to Birds and Beasts, that they are in the middle between both. . . . There are some Brutes, that seem to have as much Knowledge and Reason, as some that are called Men: and the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms, are so nearly join’d, that if you will take the lowest of one, and the highest of the other, there will scarce be perceived any great difference between them; and so on til we come to the lowest and the most inorganical parts of Matter, we shall find everywhere, that the several Species are linked together, and differ but in almost insensible degrees. (3.6.12; cf. 4.16.12) Pushing the traditional principle of the plenitude of God’s creation to the point at which it undermines the traditional doctrine of natural species, Locke conceives of the natural order less as a great chain than as something akin to a braided rope of being, whose “segments” upon close observation blend imperceptibly one into another. His conception of the fluidity of species boundaries is of a piece with his references to nature’s “frequent Productions” of—what we commonly call, em¬ ploying our conventional species classifications—“Monsters, in all the Species of Animals, and of Changelings, and other strange Issues of humane Birth” (3.3.17; 3.6.22ff.; 4.4.13ff.). Especially unsettling in this account of nature’s inconstancy is Locke’s empha¬ sis on the difficulties involved in applying the doctrine of natural species to hu¬ mankind. We commonly identify human beings by reference both to a common shape or figure and to the possession of certain common faculties, preeminently rationality (2.12.6; 3.3.10; 3.6.3, 26; 4.4.16; 4.6.15; 4.7.16; 4.17.1; Works 1823, 4.74, 378). But these qualities do not constantly and invariantly coexist in nature’s production. “There are Naturals amongst us, that have perfectly our shape, but want Reason, and some of them Language too” (3.6.22). Conversely, there are cases of beings innately disfigured to the point of being virtually unrec¬ ognizable as human, yet who are unquestionably in possession of rationality. Such was the “Abbot of St. Martin," who as a child “was very near being excluded out of the Species of Man, barely by his Shape,” despite his possession of “such Parts, as made him,” upon their development, “capable to be a Dignitary in the Church” (3.6.26). Nor will Locke concede that we can reliably determine who or what is by nature human by reference to biological parentage; “for if History lie not,” he

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reports, “Women have conceived by Drills; and what real Species, by that mea¬ sure, such a Production will be in Nature, will be a new Question” (3 6 23- cf 4.4.16). Some commentators have remarked on the seeming credulity with which Locke relays reports of monstrous births and the like.5 But to object on the basis of the unlikely veracity of these reports is to miss the point of Locke’s argument. First, Locke himself expresses doubt as to their veracity. Not only does he report conditionally that women have conceived by drills or baboons (“if History lie not”), but in relaying similar accounts in the immediately preceding paragraph he more pointedly draws attention to the questionable authority of his source: “There are Creatures, as ’tis said, (sit fides penes Authorem, but there appears no contra¬ diction, that there should be such) that with Language, and Reason, and a shape in other Things agreeing with ours, have hairy Tails.” Locke’s bizarre reports of monstrous issues are surely difficult to accept in themselves, but they function in his argument as no more than useful rhetorical exaggerations. The real point is that given the irregularity of nature’s production, “there appears no contradiction” in such stories (3.6.22; cf. 4.3.10). While Locke acknowledges the existence of an “ordinary course of Nature” (2.26.2, 4; 4.3.28; 4.6.13; 4.16.6; 7T 11.60), he yet denies that we can determine the precise status of “monsters,” or of beings that seem to fall outside this ordinary course. Whether such beings are best conceived of as merely accidental deviations from nature’s design, produced by accidental interventions into nature’s regular causal processes, or instead as instances of the general errancy of nature’s production, must remain mysterious to us so long as we are ignorant of the causal forces operating in the internal constitutions of things. “The only imaginable help in this case,” Locke concludes, “would be, that having framed perfect complex Ideas of the Properties of things ... we should thereby distinguish them into Species. But neither can this be done.” Just as we cannot definitively distinguish essential from accidental qualities and cannot determine the precise status of nature’s irregular productions, so we cannot achieve a comprehensive accounting of the properties or essential qualities of things, so long as we lack knowledge of the real essences of things (3.6.19). The upshot is that whatever our commonsense suppositions, the bases of our determi¬ nations of the sorts of species of particular substances are not their real essences, but instead the “nominal essences” that consist in sets of ideas abstracted by the mind (3.3.15; 3.6.20, 26). Our ignorance of the internal, causal constitutions of substances implies not only that we can achieve at best historical, not scientific knowledge of substances (4.3.29), but also that our conceptions of species are grounded to a significant degree in human art or convention. “’Tis evident,” Locke contends, that our precise species ideas uare made by the mind, and not by Nature” (3.6.26). Locke’s critique of the traditional doctrine of natural species constitutes the core of his often-repeated judgment of the darkness and narrowness of the under¬ standing. “[’Tis] easy to perceive, what a darkness we are involved in, how little

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’tis of Being . . . that we are capable to know ... as to a perfect Science of natural Bodies, (not to mention spiritual Beings,) we are, I think, so far from being capable of any such thing, that I conclude it lost labour to seek after it” (4.3.29). The understanding is a “dark room ... not much unlike a Closet wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left” (2.11.17). It is “narrow” (2.23.28), its reach falling “exceeding short of the vast Extent of Things” (1.1.5). According to some commentators, most notably Leo Strauss, this critique repre¬ sents a formidable philosophical challenge to any attempt to ground moral-political science in knowledge of nature. Strauss maintains that at the root of Locke’s philosophy, including his political philosophy, lies a destructive conventionalism: “From now on, nature furnishes only the almost worthless materials as in them¬ selves; the forms are supplied by man, by man’s free creation. . . .There are, therefore, no natural principles of understanding: all knowledge is acquired; all knowledge depends on labor and is labor.”6 Eugene Miller comments more specifically that “Rousseau is noted for having blurred the line between the human and the subhuman, but Locke pushes at least as far as would his successor the argument against a natural ground for fixing this line.”7 How then can we know human beings as the rational proprietors of natural rights, if we cannot know with any degree of reliability what a human being by nature is? By this reading, we would be required not only to endorse Peter Laslett’s well-known judgment that “the Essay has no room for natural law,”8 but also to broaden that judgment to conclude that the Essay, or Locke’s philosophy in general, has no room for natural rights either. One cannot deny that Locke supplies considerable textual support for the conventionalist reading. As we have observed, Locke sees an analogy between the mind’s formation of complex ideas and the activity of laboring, wherein we endeavor to produce things of material value. “Man’s Power,” he declares, is “much-what the same in the Material and Intellectual World” (2.12.1; also 2.2.2). Much depends, therefore, upon how Locke conceives of the creative power of human labor, and upon how far he wishes to extend this analogy. As Strauss and others have shown, a careful reading of the vitally important fifth chapter of the Second Treatise reveals that, according to Locke, the productive power of human labor in the material world is immense in comparison with the spontaneous pro¬ ductivity of nature. Whereas “Nature and the Earth furnished only the almost worthless Materials, as in themselves,” Locke estimates roughly that human labor fortified by “Invention and Arts” is a thousandfold, perhaps even a hundred¬ thousandfold, more productive than unimproved nature (11.43, 44, 48; see more generally 32, 37-48).9 Perfected by arts, the activity of laboring, as Locke con¬ ceives of it, constitutes a virtual creation ex nihilo.10 The radical creativity of material laboring in this account indicates clearly what is suggestive and troubling in Locke’s assimilation of thinking to laboring. Locke readily acknowledges that just as we “can do nothing towards the making the least Particle of new Matter,” so “it is not in the Power of the most exalted Wit, or enlarged Understanding ... to invent or frame one new simple Idea in the mind”

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(2.2.2). But of what significance is this concession, in light of his insistence in the Second Treatise that nature contributes to the process of production virtually nothing of value, and that virtually everything of value is produced by human labor? Precisely what is the worth of nature’s provision to the human understand¬ ing? To what extent, according to the argument of the Essay, does the external world depend for its orderliness upon the creative powers of the human under¬ standing or the human mind? Obviously, a world visible only as a mere aggrega¬ tion of discrete simple ideas would be an unintelligible and therefore uninhabitable world, and would thus correspond to the unimproved material world that Locke describes in the Second Treatise as “waste.” Is this the world that, according to Locke’s argument in the Essay, the human mind naturally confronts? Does nature provide no significant guidance or discipline for our attempts to render an orderly, intelligible external world?

The Limits of Locke’s Conventionalism To understand the scope of Locke’s conventionalism, it is useful first to clarify the specific intention governing Locke’s critique of premodem natural science. My general aim is to show that although Locke’s rejection of the scientific or demon¬ strative in favor of the historical study of nature plainly involves the assertion of an element of conventionalism, it does not entail a flight into arbitrariness. To the contrary, by emphasizing the element of conventionalism, Locke intends in fact to promote a more cautious, disciplined, genuinely empirical study of nature. Locke believes it pardonable that he dwells on the question of essences, “because the Faults, Men are usually guilty of in this kind, are not only the greatest hinderances of true Knowledge; but are so well thought of, as to pass for it” (3.5.16). These faults neither originate in nor are limited to the scholastic “Men of Argument” (3.11.3), but the manner in which they hinder intellectual progress holds a place of prominence in Locke’s vigorous critique of scholastic doctrines. Ultimately, the errors of the schools concerning species and essences represent only particularly important instances of their fundamental error. In holding that natural species essences not only exist but are in principle perfectly intelligible to us, Locke’s scholastics hold that there exists a direct correspondence between the (properly cultivated) understanding and the external, natural world. They hold that their names and definitions of various kinds of substances constitute perfectly adequate representations of the order of things articulated in nature. Like those who possess only a purely prescientific or commonsense understanding of the world, they erroneously “suppose their words to stand also for the reality of things” (3.2.5; also 2.13.18; 3.9.5; 3.10.14ff.; 3.11.6; 4.4.17; 4.7.15; CU29). In general, they suppose the perfect adequacy of nature’s provision for the human understanding. This fundamental and far-reaching error presents a twofold impediment to the advancement of knowledge. First, in treating their names of substances and species as though they were authorized by nature itself (or in Locke’s terminolo-

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gy, as though they were themselves “archetypes” and not “ectypes” or copies), the scholastics tend to obscure the need to refine or correct their definitions by reference to empirical reality. Thus Locke objects to the practice of “some Philos¬ ophers” who would “believe [their] Reason (for so Men improperly call Argu¬ ments drawn from their Principles) against their Senses” (4.20.10; 4.3.16). In its preoccupation with the “substantial forms” of things, scholastic natural science represents a creature more of the imagination than of the understanding, consisting of a reification of the mind’s own creations. The extreme result is a dogmatic attempt to ground natural science in “the bare Contemplation of . . . abstract Ideas” (4.12.9; 4.7.11ff.; 4.8.9ff.). “[T]he reasoners resemble spiders,” remarks Bacon in a similar spirit, “who make cobwebs out of their own substance.”11 Second, by virtue of the fact that its supposed discoveries proceed from abstract, deductive reasoning, the scholastic natural science tends to carry an unreasonable expectation of demonstrative certainty as its proper yield. The practical effect of both its flight from empirical or historical inquiry and its demand for certainty is the production of virtually infinite and endless disputes, as the scholastic natural science inflates the “confidence of mistaken Pretenders to a knowledge that they had not” (3.8.2; also 3.6.49; 3.10.21). The likely culmination of this vain, gas¬ eous science of disputation, according to Locke, is a collapse into “perfect Scepti¬ cism” or into an extreme epistemological willfulness (1.1.7; 3.10.22). Against this scholastic conception and the classical teleological science that underlies it, Locke endorses a fundamentally Baconian conception of science that is grounded in empirical or historical inquiry rather than in abstract reasoning, and that promises to yield probabilistic rather than demonstrative knowledge. In assessing the conventionalist reading of Lockean science, we need to understand the reasoning that persuades Locke that this account of science will serve rather to correct than to exacerbate the errors and vices of premodem science, or to prevent rather than to advance the collapse of science into “perfect Scepticism.” Having denied the possibility of a strict, demonstrative natural science on grounds essentially the same as those supporting his rejection of the doctrine of natural species, Locke hastens to add that he “would not therefore be thought to dis-esteem, or dissuade the Study of Nature” (4.12.12). Alongside his arguments for the suppositional or hypothetical character of substance ideas and for the false, useless, and pernicious character of the doctrine of natural species, Locke yet insists that we must not form our ideas of substances and kinds arbitrarily. For though Men may make what complex Ideas they please, and give what Names to them they will; yet if they will be understood, when they speak of Things really existing, they must, in some degree, conform their Ideas to the Things they would speak of: Or else Men’s Language will be like that of Babel, and every Man’s Words, being intelligible only to himself, would no longer serve to Conversation, and the ordinary Affairs of Life. (3.6.28; also 3.6.51) Our ultimate uncertainty about the existence of necessary combinations or repugnancies among ideas or qualities in nature does not liberate us from signifi-

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cant natural discipline in the formation of these ideas. One must “not make his own Hypothesis the Rule of Nature ... For no definitions, that I know, no Suppositions of any Sect, are of force enough to destroy constant Experience” (2.1.21,19; also 4.8.10). To the contrary, our uncertainty is such as to underline the need for such discipline: "our Ideas of Substances . . . must not consist of Ideas put together at the Pleasure of our Thoughts,” but “must be such, and such only, as are made up of such simple ones, as have been discovered to co-exist in Nature” (4.4.12). Displaying in this respect a closer fidelity to the spirit of Aristotle than do the scholastics who invoke his authority, Locke repudiates the scholastics’ hyperrationalist demand for certainty in all fields of inquiry: “we shall then use our Understandings right, when we entertain all Objects in that Way and Propor¬ tion, that they are suited to our Faculties . . . and not peremptorily, or intemperately require Demonstration, and demand Certainty, where Probability only is to be had” (1.1.5).12 The impossibility of demonstrative certainty concerning the necessary relations among some ideas does not imply the futility of such study; it merely means that as compared to disciplines such as mathematics that involve ideas that are the mind’s own creations or archetypes, the proper study of nature differs in its methods and in the type of knowledge or assent that it can produce. “We must therefore . . . adapt our methods of Enquiry to the nature of the Ideas we examine, and the Truth we search after” (4.12.7). The proper method of inquiry into the world of nature involves not abstract, deductive reasoning about names and definitions, but rather inductive, probabilistic reasoning grounded in the careful recording of “Experience” or “Observation” (4.12.12, also 14; 4.3.16).13 Having rejected the naive naturalism inherent in premodem science, Locke does not affirm the opposite extreme of radical conventionalism or historicism. Whereas the premodem doctrines of natural science and natural species paradoxically lead their adherents away from nature, Locke urges a return to “the Fountains of Knowledge, which are in Things themselves” (3.11.5; 3.10.22, 25; 3.11.24, 25; 4.4.16, 18; 4.8.10). Emphasizing the accessibility of nature through history properly conceived, Locke adopts the Baconian usage in naming his method: “to define [substances’] Names right, natural History is to be enquired into', and their Properties are, with care and examination, to be found out” (3.11.24). This appeal to natural history as the measure of our definitions signifies Locke’s acknowledgment that our ideas of the sorts of substances need not be wholly conventional. The erroneous premodem doctrine of natural species has a partial basis in experience. As John Yolton observes, the “phrase, ‘the nature of things themselves,’ which runs throughout the Essay, almost never means ‘the internal constitution of objects’. ... It refers to the objects of observation.”14 One must question, however, not only how such usages cohere with Locke’s alternative references to the “internal Constitution, and true Nature of Things” (2.23.32; also 2.23.29) but also, more fundamentally, how Locke’s critical account of the

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historical formation of species ideas permits the human understanding to make any determination of the natures of things themselves. To find the answers to such questions, we must first consider more carefully Locke’s defense of the legitimacy and utility of probabilistic reasoning in the natural sciences. Given that we cannot be certain of cause-effect relationships, the basic question for Locke’s historically grounded study of nature concerns the degree of confidence with which we are entitled to make inductive, probabilistic judgments. In his discussion “Of the Degrees of Assent,” Locke affirms that in several degrees “Probability . . . carries so much evidence with it, that it naturally determines the Judgment,” so that assent that falls short of certainty can nonethe¬ less rise decisively above mere “Belief ’ or “Conjecture” (4.16.9). In the lowest of such degrees, Locke observes that with respect to “things that happen indif¬ ferently . . . when any particular matter of fact is vouched for by the concurrent Testimony of unsuspected Witnesses, there our Assent is . . . unavoidable.” Providing still firmer ground is the corroboration of our own Experience by “many and undoubted Witnesses.” The truth of the proposition “that most Men prefer their private Advantage, to the publick” is extremely probable, for in¬ stance, so far as the testimony of “History [gives] us such an account of Men in all Ages; and my own Experience . . . [confirms] it” (4.16.7). Finally, the “first . . . and highest degree of Probability” as to the truth of a given proposition is reached in instances wherein “the general consent of all Men, in all Ages, as far as it can be known, concurrs with a Man’s constant and never-failing Experience in like cases.” Probabilities of this degree reach “so near to Certainty, that they govern our Thoughts as absolutely, and influence all our Actions as fully, as the most evident demonstration.” When we find certain occurrences “always to be after the same manner,” as in the cases of “the stated Constitutions and Properties of Bodies,” we infer “with reason” that they represent “the regular proceedings of Causes and Effects in the ordinary course of Nature.” This “we call an Argu¬ ment from the Nature of Things themselves” (4.16.6; also 4.20.15ff.). One notices the hesitation or ambiguity in Locke’s formulation: to say “we call” this an argument from the nature of things differs from saying “this is” an argument from the nature of things. Nonetheless, Locke maintains that such arguments can claim a legitimate basis in the degree of order in the natural world, manifest to commonsense observation. “I would not here be thought to forget, much less to deny, that Nature in the Production of Things, makes several of them alike: there is nothing more obvious, especially in the Races of Animals, and all Things propagated by Seed” (3.3.13; also 3.4.17; 3.6.30, 36, 37). Locke not only observes that there are phenomenal likenesses among things in nature but also suggests that such likenesses probably represent internal or ontological likenesses: “Nature makes many particular Things, which do agree one with another, in many sensible Qualities, and probably too, in their internal frame and Constitution” (3.6.36). The resemblances or “similitudes” of things make it possible for us to make nonarbitary, empirically well-grounded classifications of substances, just as they make it possible for us to judge the adequacy of our species ideas relative to

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one another, according to their more or less refined historical accounting of coexisting ideas (3.6.31; 4.6.13). On the basis of our observation of the regular coexistence in certain beings of the qualities of “Life, Sense, spontaneous Motion, and the Faculty of Reasoning” (3.3.10), for instance, Locke’s argument permits and encourages us to treat such beings as members of a common species, and to hypothesize that their phenomenal similarities have a natural basis. Locke’s defense of the practice of arguing from the ordinary course of nature reflects in part a pragmatic consideration. A categorical rejection of arguments “from the Nature of Things” or of any empirically grounded, probabilistic judg¬ ment would be not merely unwise, but in fact simply impossible to maintain consistently in the management of everyday living. Suppose, for instance, a certain vegetable or a piece of meat, bearing a certain color, texture, flavor, and a known source of generation or parentage. Suppose further that in all or virtually all previously observed instances, such qualities have been coincident with a nutritional quality. Must our ultimate ignorance of the relevant real essence produce in us a reasonable, prohibitive doubt of the nutritional quality of the vegetable or meat before us? Locke’s answer is firmly rooted in common sense: He that in the ordinary Affairs of Life, would admit of nothing but direct plain Demon¬ stration, would be sure of nothing in this World, but of perishing quickly. The whole¬ someness of his Meat or Drink would not give him reason to venture on it: And I would fain know, what ‘tis he could do upon such grounds, as were capable of no Doubt, no Objection. (4.11.10; also 1.1.5; 4.2.14; 4.10.2; 4.11.2, 3, 4, 8; 4.14.1)15 As we shall see, Locke’s rejection of governmental arbitrariness in the Second Treatise also rests upon an argument of this kind—although in suggesting that for the purpose of determining the status of individuals under the law, we may simply presume the development of jurally qualifying human rationality in the ordinary course of nature, Locke is far less presumptuous than he may appear (see 7T 11.60-61). Of greater immediate importance than its role in ordinary affairs, however, is the function of Locke’s argument in preserving the possibility of a historically grounded science of nature. An affirmation of the radical arbitrariness of our conceptions of the natures of things would be most difficult to reconcile with Locke’s fellowship in the Royal Society, and with the fact that he not only praised but to one degree or another actively collaborated in research with the “Master-Builders” Boyle, Sydenham, and Newton, all of whom were exponents of an experimental, probabilistic natural science.16 The chemist in Locke’s exam¬ ple who wishes to experiment with gold or sulphur could hardly acquire a sample for the experiment without employing a hypothetical conception of what the substance under investigation is, or without an idea of a set of coexisting qualities to which its name properly refers (see 4.6.8ff.; also 3.6.8). Locke of course grants the need for such a conception, while maintaining that the idea in question represents merely a nominal, not a real essence. But the point is that this nominal essence could provide no help whatsoever for the designing of experiments unless one could reasonably hypothesize that certain ideas or qualities necessarily,

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naturally coexist—unless one could reasonably hypothesize, that is, that the nominal essence has a reliable foundation in nature. When our constant, nevercontroverted experience shows us that substances that in all other respects conform with our abstract ideas of fire or iron display the properties of producing warmth and melting lead or sinking in water and floating in mercury, then we can infer that in the highest probability, it is in the nature of fire and iron so to behave (4.16.6). In the end, Locke cannot escape and does not seek to escape the simple truth that it is impossible to conceive of a science of nature in any form, absent an openness to the possibility of making judgments about the natures of things. We are now in a position to dispel at least some of the obscurity with which Locke admittedly treats the issue of our classifications of substances (3.6.43). To repeat, animating Locke’s seemingly radical critique is in fact a relatively moder¬ ate, constructive objection to the arbitrariness implicit in the premodem concep¬ tions of natural science and natural species. Locke considers it important to discredit the premodem science for much the same reason that he believes it important to reject the doctrine of innatism: the claim that nature authorizes as perfectly adequate our ideas of species, like the claim that it inscribes in our minds propositional knowledge at birth, encourages us to hold those ideas dogmatically and arbitrarily, as though they were simply self-validating and required no empiri¬ cal measurement. Given this consideration, it would be absurd for Locke to assert such a radical conventionalism as would wholly or decisively liberate our con¬ struction of species ideas from any empirical foundation. Such an outcome is neither the purpose nor the necessary effect of Locke’s argument. Instead, recog¬ nizing the ultimate convergence of the scholastics’ naive naturalism and a thor¬ oughgoing modem conventionalism, Locke fashions his own argument to avoid the arbitrariness in which these extreme alternatives must end. Locke’s rejection of certainty as the proper criterion of assent in the natural sciences implies a denial that the basis of classification is an all-or-nothing propo¬ sition. That we cannot be certain of the precise natural grounds for our classifica¬ tions of substances does not compel us to embrace a pure conventionalism. With his defense of probabilistic assent, Locke seeks to promote a more genuinely empirical science of nature. He therefore fashions his critique of the doctrine of natural species to preserve the understanding that such a science is necessary and possible. It is necessary because nature’s imperfect provision to the understanding forces us to labor for knowledge that is in the far greater part neither intuitive nor obvious. And it is possible because nature provides the foundations for our efforts at classification, thus ensuring that those efforts need not collapse into arbitrari¬ ness as a result of our ignorance of real essences. On the other hand, contrary to the claims of some commentators,17 this does not mean that Locke resurrects in a different form the doctrine of natural species. In the final analysis, one cannot escape the fact that Locke consistently and em¬ phatically urges us to renounce the aspiration toward final, complete knowledge of natural species essences. The point worth emphasizing here, however, is that Locke dismisses the premodem doctrine of natural species as “wholly useless”

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(3.3.17) not only because it fails to explain how we actually form species ideas but also because we do not need to appeal to any such doctrine to avoid lapsing into arbitrariness. To repeat once more, our ideas of the species of substances are “the Workmanship of the Understanding, but have their foundation in the similitude of things” in nature (3.3.13; also 3.4.17; 3.6.30, 36, 37). While Locke clearly holds that “there is no such thing made by Nature, and established by Her amongst Men,” as “precise and unmovable” species-boundaries (3.6.27, emphasis partially added; also 3.5.9), he maintains also that our construction of species ideas need not be decisively arbitrary. The relatively stable “clusters”18 of coexisting ideas or qualities that nature presents to our observation constitute the nonarbitrary, if necessarily imperfect, foundations of our construction and historical refinement of species ideas. The general spirit of Locke’s account of our ideas of substances and species is nicely exemplified by The Federalist's brief, uncharacteristic excursion into the field of epistemology. Pausing to provide a sobering reminder of the great “ob¬ scurity” that has prevented “the most sagacious and laborious naturalists” from identifying precisely the boundaries distinguishing nonorganic, vegetable, and animal forms, let alone from determining “the distinctive characters by which the objects in each of these great departments of nature have been arranged and assorted,” Publius finds small cause for wonder in the difficulties legislators confront in the endeavor to identify the proper institutions for human government. Yet from these difficulties he infers not the futility of such endeavors, but only “the necessity of moderating . . . our expectations and hopes from the efforts of human sagacity. ” The real wonder is the impressive degree of reasonable consen¬ sus that human minds have yet proved capable of achieving.19 The fact that “I cannot define twilight,” as the contemporary political scientist James Q. Wilson observes, “does not mean that I cannot tell the difference between night and day.”20 Framed in this spirit, Locke’s account of species ideas is in keeping with his more general insistence that the “Candle, that is set up in us, shines bright enough for all our Purposes” (1.1.5). As human knowledge, for Locke, is “neither wholly necessary, nor wholly voluntary” (4.13.1), so the proper basis of our classifications of substances is partly conventional and partly natural. One must bear in mind the ultimate moder¬ ation of Locke’s position, in order to understand properly the very strong empha¬ sis that Locke places upon the conventionalist element in the acquisition or con¬ struction of human knowledge. For Locke certainly gives the appearance of prefiguring contemporary postmodern or antifoundationalist theorists in his insis¬ tence on the understanding’s alienation from the external world of nature. Along¬ side his acknowledgment of the necessity of forming our ideas of substances and substance-species based upon our observations of actual coexistences in nature, it is especially striking that Locke repeatedly uses the word arbitrary—the word that, perhaps above all others, connotes illegitimate and irresponsible power in the Second Treatise—to describe our formation of such ideas. And it is similarly striking, in view of his ultimate defense of probabilistic judgment, that he sees fit

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occasionally to denigrate such judgment, describing even the results of “wary Observation” as more-or-less sophisticated guesswork, amounting “only to Opin¬ ion” and lacking that “certainty, which is requisite to Knowledge” (4.6.13; also 4.2.14; 4.3.14; 4.12.10; 4.15.4). In an important respect, too, Locke’s (and Publius’s) critical epistemology derives much of its moral urgency from motives similar to those animating con¬ temporary liberal antifoundationalists. By calling attention to the conventionalist element in the formation of our ideas, Locke hopes to teach us to “moderate our Perswasions” (1.1.3), to move us in our “fleeting state of Action and Blindness . . . [to] be less imposing on others” (4.16.4; also 4.14.2). To take the most important instance, to be overly assured of the adequacy of one’s idea of humanity is to be tempted all too often to use that idea to define out of humanity beings deficient in one quality or another. This is the cautionary lesson of the alarming case, cited above, of the eminently rational and natively disfigured Abbot of St. Martin. Self-mistrusting reason admonishes us that our ideas of species and of the human species in particular are far from sufficiently precise to provide a basis for excluding borderline cases from entitlement to baptism, let alone for depriving them of their lives (3.6.26-27; 3.11.20; 4.4.14ff.). Like contemporary liberal antifoundationalists, Locke emphasizes the conventionalism of our species con¬ structions to provide a sobering reminder of the naturalness of human error, of the insuperable uncertainty that darkens so many of the objects of human inquiry, and therewith of the need for toleration and compromise in the pursuit of intellectual and moral consensus. Like Publius and unlike contemporary antifoundationalists, however, Locke seeks not to elevate the cause of peace over that of truth, or liberal democracy over philosophy, but instead to promote “Truth, Peace, and Learning” together (3.5.16). Without categorically affirming the conventionalism of our species constructions, Locke accords rhetorical prominence to the conventionalist element of our species constructions to persuade us to devote greater care to those con¬ structions. As Bacon holds that “opinion of store is one of the chief causes of want,”21 so Locke, as we shall see more fully in subsequent chapters, builds much of his political-philosophical edifice upon the principle that a sense of desire or uneasiness stimulates industry (2.21.34; STCE 126). Distrusting the notion of a natural harmony between mind and world as a source of mental discipline, Locke engages in a certain brinkmanship with his readers, above all with the readers of the Essay. To stimulate more careful inquiry, he must first unsettle our received ideas. Paradoxically, he occasionally denigrates probabilistic assent because his very defense of probabilism requires it. In seeking to prevent the dogmatic reifica¬ tion of our ideas, to maintain the sense of their openness and incompleteness that is necessary to any serious empirical inquiry, it is important for Locke to maintain clearly in view both the requisites of perfect knowledge and the extent to which we fall short of attaining it. As Yolton observes, “So important was it for Locke to deny the possibility of a science of nature in the rational sense of ‘science’—in order to show the need for a careful experimental science of nature—that he takes

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frequent opportunity of stressing the point.”22 Only through a sense of the ultimate hiddenness of nature can we gain such knowledge of nature as lies within our capacity. A further aspect of the rationale for Locke’s rhetorically assertive conven¬ tionalism is closely related to the preceding. General and universal ideas are creatures of the understanding, Locke insists, “made by it for its own use” (3.3.11, emphasis added). By insisting that we form ideas of the species of things “with some liberty” and “according as we have Occasion” (3.6.27; 3.3.17), Locke invites us to examine the human purposes that science has served and may serve. As we shall see more clearly in subsequent chapters, Locke, once again tacitly following Bacon, performs upon scholastic science what contemporary readers might regard as a deconstruction, exposing the extrascientific motives of the scholastics (3.10 passim) with a view toward establishing a new conception of science that is at once more honest and more humanely useful. Through a diligent employment of the natural-historical approach, Locke maintains, we can achieve a better, truer, more empirically refined understanding of the natural world than we have had. But however diligently acquired and empirically refined, it will remain true that our conception of the natural world is to some degree self-refer¬ ential, dependent upon our conception of ourselves and of the nature of our interest in historical inquiry. By emphasizing and sometimes exaggerating the errancy of nature’s production and therewith the element of human freedom in species classification, Locke invites us to reflect upon the basis of our choices in our understanding of human needs, interests, or happiness. By conceiving of humankind as the “species of species,” the species that denominates and defines boundaries for itself and other species,23 Locke reaffirms the moral and epistemo¬ logical urgency of achieving a better understanding of our own nature. The results of Locke’s natural-historical examination of human nature and the natural human condition constitute the subject matter of the next two chapters. Before proceeding to consider this examination in detail, however, it is neces¬ sary to explore further the problematic character of applying Locke’s naturalhistorical approach to the study of human nature. For the foregoing observations do not quite reach the ultimate extremes to which Locke pursues his policy of theoretical brinkmanship. One further source of potential difficulty appears in Locke’s suggestion that a reliance upon natural resemblances rather than natural essences may aid us in containing only one aspect, not the whole, of the problem of arbitrariness in our species constructions. Whereas, according to the scholastic dogma, nature produces a definite, fixed number of species, the various substan¬ tial beings in nature resemble one another, to varying degrees, in innumerable ways. Therefore, although the resemblance among certain individuals may consti¬ tute permission for us to denominate those individuals members of a common species, one might yet argue that the fact of resemblance in itself does not assist us in determining which among the innumerable resemblances among substantial beings it is reasonable or desirable for us to select as the bases of species classifi-

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cations. As Mackie puts it, nature “supplies the similitudes, [but] it supplies far more of them than we use.”24 Now, as Locke himself suggests, we might consider “very strange” the propo¬ sition that nature provides for us no assistance in the determination of which resemblances among substantial beings we should identify as the bases of species denominations. It may seem contrary to common sense to maintain that all clusters of phenomenally similar beings in nature hold equal rights to be denominated species—that the highly generalized class of red things, for instance, or the rela¬ tively specialized class of red-haired, freckled human beings, is somehow equally deserving of species denomination with the class of human beings. Further, it seems perfectly consistent with Locke’s empiricist principles to maintain that the justification for species denomination varies roughly with both the degree of similarity among members of particular “clusters” or classes, and the degree of dissimilarity between one class of beings and other classes. Just as the fact of natural resemblances provides a nonarbitrary basis for our judgments that particu¬ lar beings may be classified as members of common species, so, it would seem, the varying degrees of natural resemblances could provide nonarbitrary bases for our choices to denominate as species some clusters of phenomenally similar beings and not others. Yet, whatever the reasonableness of this view, one cannot escape the fact that Locke himself endorses the contrary view. From the fact that nature seems “very liberal of these [supposed] real Essences” (3.6.32), Locke infers that nature does not assist us in determining which clusters of resemblances merit species denomination: “each abstract Idea, with a name to it, makes a distinct Species” (3.6.38; cf. 3.3.14). This claim moves us to revisit and refine the fundamental questions raised at the close of the preceding chapter and earlier in the present chapter concerning the scope and moral significance of Locke’s conventionalism. That the natural-histori¬ cal approach permits us to denominate humankind a discrete species, according to Locke’s argument, does not imply that in denominating species, we should accord the resemblances among human beings in general a privileged status relative to the innumerable resemblances among subclasses of human beings. In particular, it does not imply that we should accord the resemblances among human beings a status of moral primacy. If we denominate species for our use, then is it in accordance with our interest, happiness, or proper purpose to accord the resemblances among human beings in general—rather than any of the many resemblances defining subclasses of humankind—a status of moral primacy?25 Underlying this question is yet another, still more profound and unsettling: If any conception of one’s own interest, happiness, or purpose depends upon a prior conceptualization of one’s self, which in mm proceeds from a prior interest or use, then how are we capable of distancing ourselves from our motivations, to reflect freely and impartially upon our proper purposes or upon the true nature of our happiness? Absent satisfactory answers to such questions, it would appear that, contrary to our earlier conclusion, the logic of Locke’s conventionalism points to the

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necessity and impossibility of a science of human nature, plunging us into an infinitely regressive, paralyzing subjectivism. And even this does not exhaust the difficulty. A closer examination of the antiteleological, apparently materialist underpinnings of Locke’s natural-historical approach to science can serve further to highlight the dangerous extremes to which the conventionalist argument can lead, and can further illuminate the reasoning that governs and limits Locke’s employment of that argument.

The “Corpuscularian Hypothesis” It is not quite adequate to argue that Locke’s critique of premodem, teleological science proceeds from a pure desire to return to “the nature of things in them¬ selves,” or to adopt a simply empirical, historical approach to the study of nature. Locke is perfectly cognizant of the propensity of uncritical data-gathering to produce “nothing but a heap of crudities” (CU 13), and is once again in agreement with Bacon on the need to “improve” or discipline the human understanding through the application of a sound method of study. Insisting repeatedly upon the need to recover the direct study of nature, Bacon yet explains that he intends “diligently and faithfully to provide helps for the sense,” through the perfection of natural history “of a new kind.” Baconian natural history aims not merely to record the varieties of matter but to discover the hidden causes of things, and it aims to achieve this end by observing the operations of nature as it is “under constraint and vexed ... by art and the hand of man. ” In this way, human science may establish “a true and lawful marriage between the empirical and the rational faculty. ”26 Characteristically employing a more austere metaphor to similar effect, Locke suggests that the proper historical study of nature resembles no mere gathering of nature’s spontaneously provided fruits, but rather a disciplined, laborious process of mining (2.2.2; 2.12.1; LN fol. 34; CU 6, 38; cf. 7T 11.2650), undertaken with a view toward multiplying and perfecting our hypotheses concerning the hidden causes or the “internal Constitution, and true Nature of things” (ECHU 2.23.32). Of particular usefulness in the mining of nature’s secrets, Locke suggests, is the “corpuscularian Hypothesis . . . which is thought to go farthest in an intelligi¬ ble Explication of the Qualities of Bodies” (4.3.16; also STCE 193). Thus notwith¬ standing his renunciations of any intention to pursue “Physical Enquiries” (ECHU 1.1.2; 2.8.4, 22; 2.21.73), scholars have commonly maintained that Locke’s purpose as an “Under-Labourer” in writing the Essay is to supply “a philosophical foundation for the new science,”27 and in particular to develop and defend “in a coherent, systematic and rational way . . . the fundamental tenets of the corpuscularian philosophy.”28 The “corpuscular philosophy,” especially in the form in which Robert Boyle elaborated it, represents “the ‘lasting monument’ of the master-builders which most impressed Locke”29 and constitutes the real foun¬ dation of his critique of premodem, teleological natural science.30 Some go so far as to claim that Locke simply presupposed or accepted without questioning the

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truth of the corpuscular theory.31 But if these claims concerning Locke’s intention are well founded, then Locke’s philosophy in general, including his political philosophy, stands in serious difficulty. For there are good reasons to doubt that Locke’s commendation of a “Historical, plain Method” (1.1.2) and the corpuscularian theory, taken in its full anti teleological significance, are in the end mutually compatible. Does Locke espouse the corpuscularian hypothesis in such manner as to avoid negating even the partial intelligibility of nature upon which his defense of natural history and experimental philosophy depends? To answer such questions, we need first to review Locke’s account of the corpuscularian hypothesis. As Locke employs it, the corpuscularian hypothesis represents most generally an attempt to explain “the Nature of Sensation” and “the Qualities of Bodies” (2.8.22; 4.3.16). Our perceptual experience contains a tremendous diversity of ideas of many sorts, including shapes, colors, sounds, tastes, odors, textures, and motions. In seeking to explain these experiences, we wonder what real beings in nature correspond to or produce our various ideas. In Locke’s formulation, we wonder what qualities in nature produce these ideas. “Quality” refers generally to “the Power to produce any Idea in our mind” (2.8.8). Our natural or initial response to such wondering, according to Locke, is simply to posit a power or quality to correspond to each of our ideas; we suppose that our idea of the shape of a red ball is produced by its quality of roundness, for instance, as we suppose that our idea of its color is produced by its quality of redness. But for Locke this is merely to restate the question, not to render intelligible the nature of sensation or of bodies. Considering further the question of how bodies produce ideas in us, Locke appeals to a criterion of conceivability: we must conclude that this process occurs “manifestly by impulse, the only way which we can conceive Bodies operate in” (2.8.11). The corpuscularian theory holds that all material objects or “natural Things . . . have a real, but unknown Constitution of their insensible Parts, from which flow those sensible Qualities, which serve us to distinguish them one from another” (3.3.17). In their capacity to effect alterations in other substantial beings, these insensible parts or “Corpuscles” are “the active parts of Matter, and the great Instruments of Nature” (4.3.25; 2.21.2).32 When we perceive objects at a distance, according to this theory, “’tis evident some singly imperceptible Bodies must come from them to the Eyes, and thereby convey to the Brain some Motion, which produces these Ideas, which we have of them” (2.8.12). This corpuscularian hypothesis, by virtue of its explanation of the production of sensory ideas by impulse, yields a perplexing distinction between two kinds of qualities or powers, which Locke designates “primary” and “secondary” qualities.33 In the most fundamental sense, primary qualities are causally primary. Corpuscles manifest “active powers” in that their “primary” or “real qualities” represent the causal bases of all the ideas that such objects present to our percep¬ tions. And from the premise that causation occurs by impulse, it follows that primary qualities “are utterly inseparable from the Body, in what estate soever it be” (2.8.9). Primary qualities are qualities without which a thing could have no

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bodily existence and thus no capacity for communicating motion by impulse. Hence the primary qualities include the “Bulk, Figure, Number, Situation . . . Motion, or Rest,” and “Texture” of objects or their constituent parts (2.23.28, 10).34 Secondary qualities are causally secondary or epiphenomenal, qualities without which a thing could conceivably have bodily existence. Examples include colors, tastes, sounds, and odors (2.8.10, 13). The difficulty inherent in this distinction comes to sight first in Locke’s puz¬ zling usage of the concept of resemblance (2.8.7, 15, 22, 25). A thing or sub¬ stance manifests a primary quality, according to Locke, when it produces an idea that “resembles” its causal ground, or that resembles a quality without which a thing cannot be conceived to have a bodily existence. A thing manifests a secondary quality when it produces, by virtue of its possession of primary qualities, an idea that does not resemble any primary quality. Although the significance of this usage of “resemblance” has generated several specific scholarly controversies35 in addition to the broader difficulties with which we are concerned, for present purposes a simple example may suffice to clarify Locke’s usage. Suppose that the actual shape or texture of a thing were decisive in determining our idea of its shape or texture; we could then say that there is a conceptual or family resem¬ blance between an idea and its determining quality. Suppose, on the other hand, that by virtue of its shape or texture, a thing could produce in us an idea of its color or taste; we could then say that there is no such resemblance between the idea in question and its determining quality.36 Locke acknowledges that, however useful this account may be in resolving some of the apparently puzzling facts in our ordinary perceptual experience (2.8.19, 20, 21), the distinction between primary and secondary qualities remains in some sense unintelligible. In particular, “we can by no means conceive how any size, figure, or motion of any Particles, can possibly produce in us the Idea of any Colour, Taste, or Sound whatsoever; there is no conceivable connexion betwixt the one and the other” (4.3.13; also 2.8.14, 25; 4.3.28). It is due to this incon¬ ceivability that we reflexively posit real qualities in things that correspond directly to our ideas of secondary qualities. The implication of Locke’s distinction, how¬ ever, is that the appearance of secondary qualities as somehow essentially or qualitatively distinct from ideas of primary qualities has no independent basis in the world external to the mind. To state it more simply, the very existence of secondary qualities consists in an interaction between object and perceiver (see 2.21.3) or between the minute, insensible parts of objects and our own sensory organs. The existence of such apparent “qualities” as sweetness as a particular taste or buzzing as a particular sound depends no less than the existence of plea¬ sure or pain (2.8.16) upon the presence of a perceiver whose sense organs interact with certain primary qualities to produce the ideas in question. In the absence of such a perceiver, such “qualities” would exist not as the colors, sounds, tastes, or smells in our ordinary sense experience, but only as the peculiar motions of variously constituted insensible corpuscles. They would “vanish and cease,” as

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Locke puts it, “and [be] reduced to their Causes, i.e. Bulk, Figure, and Motion of Parts” (2.8.17; also 2.8.23; 2.23.11). Modifying his initial identification of qualities with powers, Locke thus pro¬ ceeds to explain that primary qualities have a twofold existence, both as real, intrinsic properties of things and as powers of those things, by virtue of their possession of certain intrinsic properties, to produce certain effects. Secondary qualities, on the other hand, are in strict usage “Powers barely, and nothing but Powers, relating to several other Bodies” (2.8.23-24; cf. 2.8.10, 13-25; 2.23.810; 2.31.2).37 This distinction, with its implication of the perceiver-dependent, relational character of secondary qualities, points to the radical significance and danger of the corpuscularian theory, of which Locke is well aware. For it would seem that by adopting the corpuscularian distinction between primary and second¬ ary qualities, Locke ultimately reduces the latter to a status of unreality or mere subjectivity, thus effecting a radical and dangerous break with the commonsense understanding of the world. Given that in our ordinary experience, we appeal principally to secondary qualities to make the identifications, classifications, and distinctions whereby the world becomes intelligible and livable for us (2.8.22, 26; 2.23.8), the doctrine of the unreality of secondary qualities must have a radically unsettling effect.38 To this line of argument one might respond that the fact of their perceiverdependence does not in itself imply the unreality or radical subjectivity of second¬ ary qualities. If we conceive of secondary qualities as powers in things to produce certain sensations in beings like us, beings possessing certain sensory organs, then we can think of such powers as dispositions, constantly present in things even in the absence of any particular perceiver.39 As we shall see, Locke’s willingness to broaden his doctrine of nature’s immanence to include the dispositional qualities of natural beings is important for his accounts of experimental science and of human psychology. Further, if the sense organs through which we perceive secondary qualities are generally trustworthy to relay uniform reports of the external world, then the fact of perceiver-dependence need not be corrosive of our commonsense understanding of the world. The condition of intersubjectivity, providing that our senses are indeed common to us as human beings, operating in a common, generally uniform mamier, would stand as a practically sufficient guarantor of the objectivity of the world. Once again, however, to reflect upon this qualifying condition in fact engenders a clearer, deeper appreciation of the extremes to which Locke is willing, at least at times, to pursue the implications of the corpuscularian theory. The doctrine of the primary reality of corpuscular or material beings suggests on Locke’s part a significant measure of mistrust of the commonness or the presumptive reliability of the human senses, indicative of his more general doubt¬ fulness concerning the natural correspondence between mind and external world. True, Locke declares at one point that “the greatest assurance I can possibly have” of the existence of beings external to the mind “is the Testimony of my Eyes, which are the proper and sole Judges of this thing.”40 Yet he proceeds immediately

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to qualify this assertion, opining that “no body can, in earnest, be so sceptical, as to be uncertain of the Existence of those Things which he sees and feels.” He declares that he himself is sufficiently assured of external beings’ existence “since by their different application, I can produce in my self both Pleasure and Pain, which is one great Concernment of my present state” (4.11.2-3, emphasis added). Several commentators have remarked on the significance of Locke’s conception of the quality of solidity or resistance in general, and the power to cause physical pain in particular, as the ultimate touchstone of the reality of the external world (cf. 2.1.21 with 4.11.2-8).41 In this vein, one may compare Locke’s conception with Machiavelli’s pregnant counsel to the addressees of The Prince: “Men in general judge more by their eyes than by their hands, because seeing is given to everyone, touching to few. Everyone sees how you appear, few touch what you are. ”42 Locke’s use of the corpuscularian theory brings to light the underpinnings, in the sphere of natural science, of the Machiavellian attempt to construct a politi¬ cal science grounded in the primacy of matter to form or of the faculty of touch to that of sight. Locke regards simple ideas, acquired through faculties that we share with other sentient beings, as more adequately representative of external reality than complex ideas, constructed by means of higher or more distinctively human faculties such as imagination or abstraction (2.31.2; 2.32.9-10; 3.9.4-21). So, too, he suggests that simple ideas acquired through the sense of touch are still more trustworthy or less contestable than simple ideas acquired through other senses. If, according to the corpuscularian theory, we must conceive of perception as occurring through bodily “impulse,” then our most reliable perceptions must be the most immediate, those acquired in direct contact with their objects, with little or no mediation by the mind or by other forces in the perceptual environment. At this point we come to the deepest radicalism inherent in the corpuscularian theory. “[W]e are wont,” observes Locke, to consider the Substances we meet with, each of them, as an entire thing by it self, having all its Qualities in it self, and independent of other Things; overlooking, for the most part, the Operations of those invisible Fluids, they are encompassed with; and upon whose Motions and operations depend the greatest part of those qualities which are taken notice of in them. . . . Things, however absolute and entire they seem in themselves, are but Retainers to other parts of Nature, for that which they are most taken notice of by us. (4.6.11)

The corpuscularian theory threatens to unsettle our commonsense faith in the reliability of our perceptions, not only in the more familiar way, by heightening our consciousness of the relativity of the environments that mediate our percep¬ tions of sights and sounds in particular, but also in a much more profound way, by unsettling our faith in the stable existence of substantial beings as we ordinarily perceive them. Recall that Locke defines substance ideas as representative of “distinct particular things subsisting by themselves” (2.12.6; cf. 3.6.6). In the light of Locke’s “retainers” passage, however, it appears that there are no beings

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in our experience that truly subsist by themselves, or are knowable apart from their relations to other beings. James Gibson comments on the same passage: “Such reflections clearly require the rejection of the conception of material things as self-contained substances, each with an essence from which all its properties and operations flow. ”43 This line of interpretation reveals the deep significance of Maurice Mandelbaum’s observation that “ordinary perceptual experience, while useful in all the concerns of life, does not for Locke reveal the nature of material objects as they are in themselves. ’,44 On the corpuscularian account, our ordinary, commonsense perceptual experience is fundamentally defective in that, failing to disclose to us the real basis of the secondary qualities upon which we mainly rely for our understanding of the world, it encourages us to suppose the natural hetero¬ geneity of stable, substantial beings and of classes of beings. In turning away from earlier naturalistic philosophy to become the founder of classical philosophy and of political philosophy, Socrates proposed that the funda¬ mental condition of nature’s intelligibility is the commonsense, teleological opin¬ ion of the natural articulation of being into a plurality of individuals and species.45 In its essential significance, the corpuscularian theory represents a reversal of the original Socratic turning.46 Paradoxically, supporting Locke’s assertions that “all Things, that exist, [are] Particulars” (3.3.1, 6, 11; 2.27.3; 4.7.9; 4.17.8) is the corpuscularian premise that all things, save perhaps the individual corpuscles themselves, are essentially the same. As Michael Ayers lucidly explains, accord¬ ing to the mechanistic conception of matter characteristic of the seventeenth century’s “New Philosophy,” undifferentiated matter is the only universal nature. “The mechanist’s world is one in which all differences are differences of degree, and everything, unless an atom, is in principle indefinitely mutable.” As we have seen, in this world there can be no “great chain of being” understood “as a hierar¬ chical order of distinct species.” Indeed nature’s production is anarchic not only across species but even over time for particular individuals.47 The corpuscularian argument thus illuminates the deep and troubling significance of Locke’s observa¬ tion that “all Things that exist, besides their Author, are . . . liable to change; especially those Things we are acquainted with, and have ranked into Bands, under distinct Names or Ensigns. Thus that, which was Grass to Day, is to Mor¬ row the flesh of a Sheep; and within a few days after, becomes part of a Man” (3.3.19; also 2.26.1). For scholastic or premodem natural science, the fact of material things’ perishability poses no serious difficulty. By explaining that things possess a common species membership by virtue of partaking somehow in a common “substantial form,” the adherents of this view could conceive of the perishing of a thing as a cessation of its partaking in its previous form, without considering such change a danger to the existence of the form or the principle of classification itself. By contrast, so far as he rejects as unintelligible the appeal to some mysteri¬ ous formal cause and insists upon framing scientific explanations exclusively in antiteleological terms of material and efficient causation, Locke appears unable to affirm the primacy of constancy, stability, and order, as opposed to flux and

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anarchy, in nature’s production. In the modem, mechanistic view, the organiza¬ tion of matter into a plurality of stable, particular beings, regularly “clustered” into identifiable classes by their various structural resemblances, appears purely contingent and accidental. The organization of matter into this particular ordering appears as merely one among innumerable possibilities, none more “natural,” more indicative of any design in nature, than another. By his employment of the mechanistic, corpuscularian hypothesis, Locke forces his readers to confront the possibility that underlying nature’s seeming orderliness in its “ordinary course” lies a chaotic, arbitrary, endless process of creation and destruction. As Locke suggests, one powerful manifestation of the natural flux or chaos consists in the fact of mortality or perishability, the subjection of living beings in particular to regular cycles of generation and decay. But a still clearer and more powerful manifestation is the fact of natural predation. Is it not after all “normal,” belonging to nature’s ordinary course, for natural beings to consume and metabolize one another? If we are to explain natural events and processes solely in terms of material and efficient causation, then how can we hold it any more natural, to extend Locke’s example to its more frightening implications, for the stuff of which we are made to exist in the form of speaking, rational beings, rather than, say, as minerals in the soil or as flesh in the teeth of some other (nonhuman or human)48 predatory animal? The implication of Locke’s “retainers” principle is that the contingent charac¬ ter of our natural condition is likely to be more pervasive and profound than we are capable of realizing. For we depend for the integrity of our being not merely on our freedom from the earthly dangers of starvation, exposure, disease, and predation of one sort or another, but more fundamentally upon cosmic conditions such as the relative positions and motions of the earth and the sun, and perhaps others of which we are unaware. Take the Air but a minute from the greatest part of Living Creatures, and they pres¬ ently lose Sense, Life, and Motion. This the necessity of breathing has forced into our Knowledge. But how many other extrinsecal, and possibly very remote Bodies, do the Springs of those admirable Machines depend on, which are not vulgarly observed, or so much as thought on; and how many are there, which the severest Enquiry can never discover?. . . . [W]e in vain search for that Constitution within the Body of a Fly, or an Elephant, upon which depend those Qualities and Powers we observe in them. For which, perhaps ... we ought to look, not only beyond this our Earth and Atmosphere, but even beyond the Sun, or remotest Star our Eyes have yet discovered. For how much the Being and Operation of particular Substances in this our Globe, depend on Causes utterly beyond our view, is impossible for us to determine. . . . and the great Parts and Wheels, as I may so say, of this stupendious Structure of the Universe, may, for ought we know, have such a connexion and dependence in their Influences and Operations one upon another, that, perhaps, Things in this our Mansion, would put on quite another face, and cease to be what they are, if some one of the Stars, or great Bodies incomprehensibly remote from us, should cease to be, or move as it does. (4.6.11; cf. 4.3.24)

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How would the material or chemical constitution of human beings behave, what “powers” would it manifest, given a radically altered cosmic environment? From the perspective of this principle of contingency, it appears that there are as many human natures as there are possible environments for them, or alternatively, that our notion of a finite plurality of structural resemblances, let alone of stable natures, rests ultimately upon a mere prejudice, a groundless faith that those earthly and cosmic conditions favorable to their existence are somehow more natural than those unfavorable. And if we consider the fact that these conditions too “are all liable to Change”—that there have been, and for all we know could be again, very long periods of time in which no life at all, let alone intelligent life, existed on earth or perhaps anywhere else—then we must raise the question of flux or mutability from the earthly to the universal level. In very important respects, Locke’s corpuscularian nature resembles the arbitrary, chaotic nature of which Nietzsche conceives more elaborately two centuries later.49 The question then arises whether this conception of nature requires Locke to adopt as well a view of science that resembles that of Nietzsche and thus undermines his professed project of improving human knowledge through the more careful, more truly historical study of “the nature of things in them¬ selves.” For it appears that a nature so conceived as to be susceptible to experi¬ mental Baconian “vexing” is a nature susceptible to construction or reconstruction by human art or will, manifesting various powers in accordance with the various experimental environments that condition its operations.50 Above all, the question arises whether this conception of nature requires Locke, whatever his personal sympathies or prejudices, to adopt a Nietzschean conception of morality. For in this extreme vision of corpuscularian flux, the dangerous truth is that the human species is by nature little more than one among many links in an unbroken food chain—or, more generally, that human beings are as all other natural beings, no more than accidental and fleeting configurations of matter-in-motion, doomed to a fate of endless, meaningless mutation. In the light of modem, nonteleological natural science, as Strauss puts it, “man and his works become a mere phantasma¬ goria.”51 Taken to its extreme, the ontologically oriented critique radicalizes the conclusion of the epistemologically oriented critique: the notion that the nature of things can provide for us any sort of moral compass represents at bottom an act of self-deception, an expression of human neediness or willfulness.

The Limits of Locke’s Corpuscularianism In response to the foregoing evidence, one may be tempted to locate Locke’s core theoretical principles at the extremes of modem or even postmodern thought. Once again, however, it is best to resist this temptation. For Locke expresses clear and significant reservations with respect to his employment of the corpuscularian hypothesis and the doctrine of the contingency and mutability of beings. Upon closer examination, those reservations suggest that Locke’s employment of the corpuscularian hypothesis and his epistemological critique of premodem science

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serve fundamentally similar purposes. In particular, the doctrine of the contin¬ gency of beings does not settle, but instead focuses more sharply the question of human nature, and underscores the primacy of that question for Locke’s political philosophy and his philosophy as a whole. We recall that Locke presents the corpuscularian theory as useful for expli¬ cating the “Nature of Sensation” and “the Qualities of Bodies.” It is clear, how¬ ever, that Locke’s assent to that theory is at best provisional. Corpuscularianism is merely a “more rational Opinion” than the premodem doctrine of natural species, or is that theory “which is thought to go farthest” toward an adequate account (2.8.22; 3.3.17; 4.3.16). In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke offers the similarly reserved endorsement that “the Modem Corpuscularians talk, in most Things, more intelligibly than the Peripateticks, who possessed the Schools immediately before them” (193; cf. ECHU 3.4.10). To be sure, one must consider the contexts of such remarks. It is possible that Locke tempers his en¬ dorsement of modem corpuscularianism for pedagogical rather than strictly scientific or philosophical reasons.52 Even so, the evidence is clear that although Locke seems fundamentally committed to nonteleological science in some form as the most promising avenue of explanation of most natural phemonena, he is dissatisfied in very important respects with the explanatory power of the corpuscularian theories with which he is acquainted. As Margaret Wilson cor¬ rectly observes, Locke’s various qualifications of his assent amount to an acknowl¬ edgement “that most of what goes on in the world is incomprehensible from the point of view of Boylean mechanism.”53 Locke readily acknowledges the resistance of diverse natural phenomena to corpuscularian explanation (4.3.29). While he remains open to the possibility of thinking matter, he concedes the failure of corpuscularian theories in general to explain mental activity or the phenomena of consciousness (4.3.6; 4.10.10ff.). More specifically, he observes that the corpuscularian theory does not assist us in comprehending the phenomenon of human perception, or the specific processes in which primary qualities produce secondary qualities (4.3.12ff). In his “Exami¬ nation of Malebranche’s Opinion of Seeing All Things in God,” Locke confesses: “Impressions made on the retina by rays of light, I think I understand; and mo¬ tions from thence continued to the brain . . . produce ideas in our minds, I am persuaded, but in a manner to me incomprehensible. . . . The ideas it is certain I have ... but the manner how I come by them, how it is that I perceive ... I understand not” (Works 1877, 2.421-2). With respect to perception, in connection with the claim that a nonimpulsive sensation is inconceivable to us, it is also pertinent to bear in mind Locke’s denial that the inconceivability of a given proposition can in itself justify assent to its contrary (4.3.6; 4.10.19). This reser¬ vation is especially pertinent for the inconceivability of action at a distance, given the fact that the phenomenon of gravity seems precisely to contradict this princi¬ ple. In the Essay, Locke observes that the manner in which bodies communicate motion to each other is wholly mysterious to us (2.23.28). In subsequent works, Locke holds the corpuscularian hypothesis useless for explaining gravity, declar-

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ing in his controversy with Reverend Stillingfleet that Newton’s work has con¬ vinced him to discard the opinion that bodies operate only by impulse (STCE 192; “Elements of Natural Philosophy,” Works 1877, 2.474; Works 1823, 4.467-68). Perhaps most important in the present context is the consideration that to be truly useful in explaining the properties of both individual substances and species essences, the corpuscularian theory would have to provide an explanation of the coherence, the relatively stable union, of the insensible particles that constitute observable bodies.54 Yet we “can as little understand how the parts of Body cohere, as how we our selves perceive, or move” (2.23.25; see 2.23.23-27). This shortcoming of the corpuscularian theories helps explain the measure of agnostic reserve that Locke expresses in conceiving of the nature of matter. At times it appears that, in this respect, he is not so committed to the mechanistic principles of the seventeenth century’s “New Philosophy” as Ayers suggests. Locke con¬ cedes that in “speaking of Matter, we speak of it always as one, because in truth, it expresly contains nothing but the Idea of a solid Substance, which is every where the same, every where uniform. ”55 But this does not entitle us to make inferences about the real world of nature, because it merely means that matter as we conceive it is a pure abstraction: “since Solidity cannot exist without Exten¬ sion, the taking Matter to be the name of something really existing under that Precision” can produce nothing but disputation and obscurity (3.10.15; 4.10.9). In Locke’s view, although “our general or specifick conception of Matter makes us speak of it as one thing, yet really all Matter is not one individual thing” (4.10.10). Matter exists in the world only in particularized parcels that combine and recombine with one another in mysterious ways to produce an enormous diversity of impermanent, yet relatively stable and regular forms of existence. The abstract conception of the unity or sameness of matter may enable us easily enough to account for the element of flux or mutability in the physical world; but so long as we cannot account as well for the order and stability amid the flux—for the facts of cohesion and continuity, and for the regular “clustering” or resem¬ blances among individual beings—we will remain ignorant of “the Substance of Body” (2.23.30; also 4.3.22). Contrary to the imputation of a nihilistic ontology, it seems to be the case that the corpuscularian theory’s incapacity to explain the degree of observable order in nature is of major importance in preventing Locke from assenting to that theory in more than a qualified and provisional manner. Locke does not assume the truth of the corpuscularian theory and then employ it to absolutize the principle of change or transience, to the dogmatic exclusion of the phenomena that manifest a measure of order in the world. In keeping with his reservations concerning corpuscularian theories, he draws relatively restrained, moderate inferences from his observations of the contingency and mutability of beings. With respect to the latter, for instance, he concludes that the “Doctrine of the Immutability of Essences, proves them to be only abstract Ideas” (3.3.19). As Locke presents it here, the fact of mutability implies only that real, corpuscularian constitutions or essences cannot be “ingenerable, and incorruptible.” It need not mean that the constitutions of things are so unstable as to afford no legitimate

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bases for our constructions of essence and species ideas. Similarly, from his discussion of the principle of contingency, Locke infers that our knowledge of the natures of things is very incomplete: “we have very imperfect Ideas of Substances" and should “put an end to all our hopes of ever having the Ideas of their real Essences (4.6.12). Fundamentally, Locke’s principle of contingency amounts to a reminder that in conceiving of the natures of humans and other earthly beings, we must take as a premise the presence of certain environmental conditions that bring forth and sustain those natures in their ordinarily observable modes of existence, growth, and development. Our ideas of nature proceed inevitably from a perspective—anthropocentric in its focus on those qualities accessible to our sensory capacities, geocentric in its presumption of the normality of the present material, climatic, and atmospheric conditions of the earth, and perhaps also comprehending the present constitution of the whole solar system or even the galaxy in which the earth is situated. As we shall see more clearly in the following chapter, it is crucial to Locke’s enterprise to heighten our awareness of the contingencies and uncertainties of the natural human condition. In moving us to reflect upon the contingent character of our ideas and our existence, however, Locke does not go so far as to suggest that our environment really is unstable or mutable in the extreme—that there is any significant likelihood that the atmosphere could suddenly become unbreathable, for instance, or that there could occur a sudden alteration in the proximity of the earth to the sun, let alone that particular beings could suddenly disintegrate, or radically mutate out of their ordinary patterns of development. To repeat, Locke maintains that absent at least a provisional confidence in the regularity of nature’s course, we would be unable either to meet the daily requirements of living or to improve our knowledge. By moving us to reflect upon the ultimate contingency of our ideas and our existence, Locke means not to deny the reasonableness of framing our ideas by reference to the forms of being manifest in nature’s ordinary course but rather to impress upon us the provisional character of those ideas. Locke’s employment of the corpuscularian hypothesis and his more general endorsement of nonteleological science serve the same overarching purposes as his epistemological critique of premodern teleological science. For instance, his hypothetical description of a real corpuscularian essence from which we could deduce a thing’s properties represents an elaboration of the unattainable requisites of a perfect, demonstrative science of nature (4.3.25). The fact that knowledge of this “true Nature” is in principle unattainable compels us to classify things histori¬ cally or descriptively rather than scientifically, while the recognition that only such knowledge is perfect prevents us from reifying our own classifications as finally adequate. More profoundly, employing the corpuscularian theory to call attention to the ultimate contingency of beings, Locke calls attention to the fact that the number and character of the powers of things must be functions of chang¬ ing environmental conditions. In principle, therefore, the powers of things are infinite in number. One could not solve the problem of species classification or definition through a complete historical accounting of the secondary qualities or

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observable properties of things, not because such an endeavor would be inconve¬ nient in the extreme, but rather because such an accounting is in principle impossi¬ ble. Given his insistence that the real, internal constitutions of things are unknown to us, Locke’s corpuscularianism confirms the need to “moderate our persuasions” concerning the natures of things, to acknowledge the necessarily inadequate or provisional character of our ideas. In this way, too, it serves to stimulate attempts to improve our knowledge. But as the corpuscularian theory lends support to Locke’s attempt to “open up” our ideas of natural beings to experimental refinement, it also reveals the rhetori¬ cal oversimplification inherent in his (and Bacon’s) announced intention to redirect natural science to the historical study of “things in themselves.” Once again, Locke’s call for a reinvigorated natural history is not merely a call, against scho¬ lastic dogmatism, for more careful recording of the evidence available to the unimproved or unassisted human senses; it is also, more distinctively, an endorse¬ ment of a method of study that promises an enormous expansion of the data available for our consideration. The principle of contingency yields a conception of natural things as harboring a virtual infinity of undiscovered powers, whose discovery is possible by means of the experimental “vexing” of natural beings, or the manipulation of the environments in which their various powers are made manifest. In this respect, the corpuscularian theory or nonteleological science in general is attractive to Locke in that it holds the promise of endless progress in the study of nature, endless increase and refinement of our historical knowledge of the powers of natural beings. Moreover, through the experimental manipulation of their environments we can increase not only our knowledge of natural beings but also our ability to harness their powers for our own uses. Like “that one contempt¬ ible Mineral” iron, many natural beings may hold hidden, hitherto unsuspected powers to enhance our “Ease and Health, and . . . increase our stock of Conve¬ niences for this Life.” Locke’s progressivist, Baconian natural history aims to improve further and perhaps to spread the condition of “this part of the World, where Knowledge and Plenty seem to vie each with other” (4.12.10, 11). This account of Locke’s purposes implies that in conceiving of a modem empiricism to replace an abstract, vainly disputatious premodem science, Locke seeks to effect a delicate collaboration between two forms of empiricism. Mindful of the needs of common life and for a realistic basis of scientific experimentation, Locke seeks to preserve the commonsense opinion of the stable, normative charac¬ ter of nature’s ordinary course. Yet at least to some degree Locke needs to unset¬ tle that opinion, in order to stimulate the inquiries that promise to expand human knowledge and power. The proper role of the modem, scientific empiricism that is exemplified in the mechanistic corpuscularian hypothesis is therefore not to replace, but instead to improve upon the empiricism that is limited to commonsense observation. Locke displays a clear appreciation of the necessity and the difficulty of preserving a collaborative association between commonsense and modem-scientific empiricism in a remarkable digression occurring in the Essay's chapter “Of Our Complex Ideas of Substances.”

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Having restated in this chapter the hypothesis that the observable qualities of material substances have their causal bases in the primary qualities of the insen¬ sible corpuscularian constituents of those substances, Locke digresses, apparently to sound a note of reassurance. The corpuscularian theory calls to our attention the inadequacy of our faculties for the genuinely scientific study of nature, so far as we would require “Microscopical Eyes” or senses “much quicker and acuter” than those naturally given us, in order to “penetrate . . . into the secret Composition, and radical Texture of Bodies. ” But perhaps we should not lament our deficiencies in this respect; Locke reassures us that the possession of senses modified in the manner he describes would be “inconsistent with our Being, or at least well-being in this part of the Universe.” In all probability such heightened powers of percep¬ tion would overwhelm us with sensory minutiae, obscuring the data, accessible to the unimproved common senses, that enable us to make the ordinary identifica¬ tions and distinctions whereby we order our daily lives. We should therefore rest secure in the belief that the “infinite wise Contriver of us . . . hath fitted our Senses, Faculties, and Organs, to the conveniences of Life, and the Business we have to do here” (2.23.12). In the immediate sequel, however, Locke subtly and significantly qualifies this affirmation of the providedness of our natural perceptual condition, proposing now that only “in our present State,” one wherein we possess “unalterable Organs,” would the possession of sense organs thus modified be of no advantage to us. What we would find truly disorienting would not be our perception or knowledge of ordinarily insensible particles as such but rather a condition in which we could perceive only the primary qualities of microscopic bodies, without any conception of them as constituents of the larger bodies manifest in the world of commonsense experience. Faced with the choice of living exclusively either in the world of minute, corpuscularian phenomena or in the world of commonsense experience, it would therefore be rational for us to choose the latter. But Locke is not content to let the matter rest here. Immediately after illustrating the disadvantages of living exclusively in a world of normally insensible corpuscles, he proposes an “extravagant conjecture” according to which, like angels assuming bodies, we could alter our organs of perception “to suit them to [our] present Design.” What wonders might we discover, he continues enthusiastically, if we could view at our pleasure “the Figure and Motion in the minute Particles of the Blood, and other juices of Animals, as distinctly as ... at other times, the shape and motion of the Animals themselves”—if, in other words, we could pass at will between the worlds of minute particles and of observable objects, or between the worlds manifest to our improved and to our unimproved senses (2.23.13)?56 Now, however “wild a Fancy” it may be with respect to the “Beings above us,” Locke’s conjecture is not at all extravagant as applied to human beings. The microscopes of the late seventeenth century were already capable of “augmenting the acuteness of our Senses” to a degree sufficient to raise to the level of phenom¬ ena things or events that lie beneath or beyond those ordinarily perceptible; and Locke explicitly imagines the advent of far more powerful microscopes, and

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perhaps by implication also that of similarly powerful instruments for the augmen¬ tation of other senses (2.23.11,12). In such means we do possess to a considerable extent the power of “Spirits” to alter our perceptual organs, and thereby, so it would seem, to pass between the worlds of improved and unimproved sense experience. In referring to the wonders that artificially improved perceptions might mani¬ fest to us, and by implication to the greater knowledge of nature that they might facilitate, Locke expresses much of the promise that his “extravagant conjecture” holds forth. To this one might add his emphasis on the close relation between “Knowledge and Plenty,” or on the technological dimension of the promise of modem science. Of at least equal significance, however, is his acknowledgment of the danger. In order to expand our knowledge of nature, we must enlarge and to some degree transcend our commonsense experience. The danger is that an attempt to live exclusively in a world of microscopic corpuscles or perhaps things “yet more remote from our Comprehension” (4.3.11) would be a wholly disori¬ enting attempt to live “in a quite different World from other People” (2.23.12). Locke’s hopefulness concerning the scientific value of enlarging our sensory capacities and gaining admittance into a world of phenomena hitherto hidden is anchored by a recognition that at the close of the day we must return “home” to live in the prescientific world of commonsense experience. The possession of the unalterably acute senses in Locke’s digression is the equivalent of the hypothetical supposition of the exclusive reality of insensible corpuscles and their primary qualities. To make this supposition is in effect to suppose the banishment of human beings with their ordinary sensory organs from the real world.57 But natural science in Locke’s view must be natural science for human beings, for beings naturally constituted as we are. Our artificial enhancements of our sensory endow¬ ments and our hypotheses concerning insensible corpuscles are useful so far as they render the natural world, the world in which we must live, more intelligible to us and more manipulable by us. There can be no doubt that Locke finds the corpuscularian hypothesis partially useful for the achievement of these aims. But it is crucial that having once resolved the ordinarily observable bodies of the universe into minute particles, the modem scientist must somehow put them back together. The physicist’s concern with reductive explanation and the technological desire for manipulation must be reconciled with the concern of the taxonomist and ultimately with the commonsense experience of the man or citizen.58 Yet, as Locke’s “extravagant Conjecture” also suggests, the possibility of such a reconciliation remains problematic. First, it is surely questionable whether the discoveries of the new natural science will ultimately render our commonsense observations more intelligible. Because so much of the relevant data lie outside the realm of our ordinary experience, inherent almost by definition in Locke’s “ex¬ travagant conjecture” or in the modem enterprise of experimental natural science is the unpredictability of its results. No matter how sound the hypothesis, the attempt to observe hitherto unobservable data will inevitably produce frequent surprises, thereby generating further questions and directions for further research,

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calling forth the invention of ever-more powerful instruments of observation and measurement, enabling scientists in turn to uncover further surprises, with the whole process continuing ad infinitum. In suggesting our ability to imitate the “Spirits” who can gain admittance to the world of science without thereby losing their grounding in the world of common sense, Locke may seem to assume that whatever we discover through the augmentation of our natural senses will be compatible with what we know through ordinary experience, leaving our ordinary world intact. Viewing this suggestion from a present-day perspective, surveying the yield of the intervening three hundred years of intellectual laboring, one might perceive in Locke’s enthusiasm a measure of naivete, in proportion to the difficul¬ ties involved in reconciling with commonsense experience the many perplexing and paradoxical discoveries of contemporary natural science. But perhaps Locke is not so naive. Notwithstanding his deceptively modest characterization of himself in the Essay's “Epistle to the Reader,” along with his qualified insistence upon conforming one’s language with common usage (3.11.1112), Locke repeatedly affirms that much of his reasoning must appear strange, novel, or contrary to ordinary habits of thinking (ECHU “Epistle to the Reader,” 8; 2.27.27; 3.6.38; 7TII.9, 13, 180; CU 1). For this reason among others, it is hardly likely that Locke simply presumes the compatibility of the discoveries of modem, nonteleological science with commonsense experience. It is more likely that he means in part to suggest the potential difficulty of reconciling the two, when he observes that whereas “Morality is the proper Science, and business of Mankind in general. . . . [the] several Arts, conversant about several parts of Nature, are the Lot and private Talent of particular Men” (4.12.11). Still, it does not resolve the problem to maintain, in view of its potential for unsettling the commonsense understanding of the world upon which we order our daily lives, that scientific inquiry must be regarded as a properly esoteric pursuit. As in Bacon’s New Atlantis, so in Locke’s thought questions persist as to where the members of the class of scientific or philosophic inquirers will find the basis of their own moral and political principles, and whether those principles will be able to coexist peacefully with the differently grounded moral and political principles of the nonscientific majority. Herein lies the deeper danger inherent in modem nonteleological science as Locke conceives of it. Not only will its particular discoveries threaten continually to unsettle our commonsense orientation, but in a more general way the enterprise of modem nonteleological science threatens to discredit the very idea that the ordinary course of nature manifest to our common senses could supply moral guidance. As we have seen, according to Locke’s epistemological conventionalism the very large number of phenomenal or structural resemblances in nature allows the human understanding significant liberty in the framing of species ideas, and therefore renders questionable whether historical inquiry can uncover rationally compelling moral principles inherent in the order of nature. Locke s nonteleolog¬ ical science forces us to push this questioning still further. Even if we were to discover rules of conduct inherent in nature’s ordinary course, why should we

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regard such rules as “normative” or authoritative, as genuine principles of natural law or natural right? As the foregoing discussion has shown, essential to Locke’s experimental, nonteleological science is precisely a refusal to regard nature’s ordinary course as authoritative for the purposes of scientific inquiry. An essential premise of that science holds that the powers or properties of natural beings are only partially manifest to our ordinary or unimproved observation, such that their many hidden powers must be forced into view through the experimental manipula¬ tion of their environments. By virtue of the tools supplied by modem science, it lies within the power of humankind to alter the aspect of nature by altering the environments within which the properties of natural beings appear. By such means we can appropriate for our own use powers originally or “naturally” invisible to us and thus beyond our grasp. As we shall see in the next three chapters, Locke’s partly conventional, nonteleological science constitutes a vitally important element of his account of the proper response to a natural condition of penury or unprovidedness. Humankind must become more active in the study of nature, must take responsibility for the progressive improvement of human knowledge and the human condition. In this respect, Locke’s project conforms with the general modem project of elevating humankind to a status of sovereignty over the natural world. But so far as this project involves the reconfiguring of nature itself, the essential challenge for Locke, as for other modems, is to show how this assertion of responsibility can remain truly responsible in character, or can avoid plunging us into a chaos of subjective, willful creativity. Locke’s nonteleological natural science as well as his epistemological conven¬ tionalism thus brings us ultimately to confront the question of human nature, or of the grounds of human choice. The principle of contingency, implying a poten¬ tial infinity of powers discoverable through experimental science, raises with particular force the question concerning the ultimate justification of the active accumulation of knowledge in Locke’s project. So far as Locke maintains that final, actualized philosophic knowledge of the natures of things lies forever beyond our grasp, Lockean science may appear to consist in a limitless, pur¬ poseless accumulation of partial knowledge or technological power.59 In the service of what end, what vision of human happiness or well-being, does the Lockean scientist or natural philosopher labor? This question can be restated in still more radical and challenging terms. As we have seen, Locke seems anxious to limit his application of the corpuscularian theory to the study of human nature. While he finds in that theory much promise for illuminating the conditions of bodily health and disease, he declines any attempt at a corpuscularian explanation of mental phenomena. Yet in a broader respect, the principle of the contingency of beings would seem to carry no less suggestive implications for human nature than for any other nature. Are we to consider human beings thoroughly malleable, capable like all other beings of manifesting infinitely various powers in accordance with alterations in their environments? Must the purportedly rational, responsible Lockean self therefore

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give way to the radically individualistic, protean, expressive self celebrated by later modem and postmodern liberal theorists—and exploited as a fit subject for the revolutionary, antiliberal designs of nineteenth- and twentieth-century social engineers? Is the essence of human being, the “species of species” according to Lockean conventionalism and nonteleological science, conceivable otherwise than as a despotic relation of malleability and creativity, or as the activity of individual or collective self-experimentation? “Morality and Mechanism,” Locke remarks somewhat cryptically, “are not very easy to be reconciled, or made consistent” (1.3.14). Can Locke indeed reconcile them? The principle of the contingency of natural beings or substances implies that one cannot properly address such questions by considering human nature in the abstract, as subsisting by itself, without relation to other beings. To get to the bottom of the conception of human nature upon which Locke’s political philosophy ultimately rests, we must consider more specifically the natural environment—in particular the fundamental mutability or stability of the natural environment—within or out of which humankind develops. Reconceived in the light of Locke’s Baconian natural history, with its principle of contingency, in other words, the question of human nature sheds some of its absolutist or “essentialist” connotations and becomes the question of the natural human condition. To explore the resources of Locke’s political philosophy for addressing the questions and resolving the difficulties raised by his critical epistemology and nonteleo¬ logical science, therefore, we must consider the basis of Locke’s political morality in his historical account of the natural human condition or the “state of nature.”

Notes 1. On the ambiguities in Locke’s usage of this term, see especially Gilbert Ryle, “John Locke on the Human Understanding,” in Locke and Berkeley, eds. C. B. Martin and D. M. Armstrong (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), 16ff. See also Colman, Locke’s Moral Philosophy, 76-83. 2. Michael Ayers, Locke, vol. 2, 66-67; Zuckert, Natural Rights, 203. 3. Bacon, The New Organon, ed. Fulton Anderson (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), Book 2, aphorisms 29-30, pp. 178-79. 4. On Locke’s employment of the concept of the great chain of being, contrast Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966 (1936)], 67-98, 227ff., with John Yolton, Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 33, and Locke: An Introduction (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 109ff. 5. See, e.g., the judgment of the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury that these passages reveal an oddly ‘credulous Mr. Locke’ [quoted in John Harrison and Peter Laslett, The Library of John Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 29]. Cf. J. L. Mackie, Problems From Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 87-88. 6. Strauss, Natural Right, 249. 7. “Locke on the Meaning of Political Language,” 177. 8. Laslett, “Introduction,” 81.

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9. Strauss, Natural Right, 235-49; Goldwin, “John Locke,” 460-70; Neal Wood, John Locke and Agrarian Capitalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 51-67; Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 141-45, 161-67; Zuckert, Natural Rights, 264-66. 10. Consider the contrast of divine with Bensalemite providence and “humanitarianism” in Bacon’s New Atlantis. See David C. Innes, “Bacon’s New Atlantis: The Christian Hope and the Modern Hope,” Interpretation 22, no. 1 (Fall 1994): 3-37. 11. Bacon, New Organon, Book 1, aph. 95; cf. aphs. 62-72. On the revolt of the early modern empiricists or proponents of the new “experimental philosophy” against the scholastic “orgy of rationalism,” see A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: MacMillan, 1925), 12-24, 57ff. On Locke’s critique as an instance of this revolt, see Maurice Mandelbaum, Philosophy, Science, and Sense Perception (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964), 7-8, 53ff.; John Yolton, “The Science of Nature,” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Yolton, 188-93, and Locke and the Com¬ pass of Human Understanding, 44-75, especially 54ff.; Kathleen Squadrito, John Locke (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979), 28-29, 126. 12. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1094b. In a similar spirit, Gilbert Ryle, “John Locke on the Human Understanding,” holds that Locke’s major contribution to philosophy lies in his division of the sciences (38). It is noteworthy that Locke treats Aristotle much more respectfully and much less polemically than he treats the “schoolmen,” thus departing from Bacon’s consistently polemical usage in the New Organon. 13. On Locke’s insistence upon probabilism over certainty as the standard of assent proper to the natural sciences, see Yolton, “The Science of Nature,” 189ff.; also Barbara Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), 3-73. 14. Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding, 124. 15. Cf. King, Life of John Locke, 324. 16. The first Secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg, describes its purpose as follows: “It is our business, in the first place, to scrutinize the whole of Nature and to investigate its activity and powers by means of observations and experiments; and then in course of time to hammer out a more solid philosophy and more ample amenities of civilization” [Quoted in Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 37], On Locke’s collaborations with Boyle and Sydenham, see Cranston, John Locke: A Biography, 88-93. On the relationship between Locke and Newton, see especially G. A. J. Rogers, “Locke’s Essay and Newton’s Principia,” Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (1978): 217-32. 17. Gibson, Locke’s Theory of Knowledge, 199-201; Aaron, John Locke, 204; and Yolton, Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding, 32-33, claim that Locke does not deny the existence of natural kinds. Mackie, Problems from Locke, 88, and Colman, Locke’s Moral Philosophy, 124, claim that Locke actually affirms their existence. Colman plainly misreads ECHU 3.10.21 as a statement in support of the existence of natural species. As Mackie observes, Locke provides more suggestive support at 3.3.13, and at 3.6.36-37, although I think that in these passages too the evidence discredits this reading. A subtle and persuasive account of the basis and extent of Locke’s rejection of the doctrine of natural species appears in Ayers, Locke, vol. 2, 65-90. 18.1 borrow the term from Mackie, Problems from Locke, 87. 19. Federalist #31. Contrast Wallin, “John Locke and the American Founding.” 20. James Q. Wilson, “On Abortion,” Commentary 97, no. 1 (January 1994): 25. 21. Bacon, The Great Instauration, “Preface,” in Bacon: The New Organon, ed. Fulton Anderson, 7; also New Organon, Book 1, aph. 85.

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22. “The Science of Nature,” 189. 23. See Zuckert's perceptive comparison of this aspect of Locke’s thought with that of Heidegger, Natural Rights, 264-65. 24. Mackie, Problems from Locke, 136. 25. Perhaps the most malignant implication that scholars have drawn from this argument is a justification of racial discrimination, based on a justification of narrow or exclusionary definitions of humankind or personhood. See Miller, “Locke on the Meaning of Political Language,” 178n; Celia McGuinness, “The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina as a Tool for Lockean Scholarship,” Interpretation 17 (1989): 141. See also the overviews in James Farr, “‘So Vile and Miserable an Estate’: The Problem of Slavery in Locke’s Political Thought,” Political Theory 14 (1986): 263-89, and Wayne Glausser, “Three Approaches to Locke and the Slave Trade,” Journal of the History of Ideas 51 (1990): 21113. Although Locke’s account would indeed permit, say, ancient Greeks to define nonGreeks, or North American or European whites to define Africans as by nature distinct species and vice versa, it would not permit such groups to define each other as morally or jurally distinct, as jural subordinates and superordinates, because such groups do not differ from one another in their members’ possession of the morally and jurally decisive capacity for the rational pursuit of happiness. See Kathleen Squadrito, “Locke’s View of Essence and Its Relation to Racism,” Locke Newsletter 6 (1975): 41-54, and Grant, John Locke’s Liberalism, 28-31. To supply an ultimately sound response to this sort of objection, however, Locke must establish that the content of the happiness that rational beings pursue does not include arbitrary rule over others. I consider this issue more fully in chapter five. 26. Bacon, “The Great Instauration,” 22-25, 14; Of the Dignity and Advancement of Learning, in Francis Bacon: A Selection of His Works, ed. Sidney Warhaft (New York: MacMillan, 1982), 2.2, 400-01. 27. Yolton, Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding, 16, 75. See also Aaron, John Locke, 74-75. 28. Rom Harre, Matter and Method (London: MacMillan, 1964), 93. 29. Peter Alexander, “Boyle and Locke on Primary and Secondary Qualities,” in Locke on Human Understanding, ed. I. C. Tipton, 63-64. 30. E.g., David Givner, “Scientific Preconceptions in Locke’s Philosophy of Lan¬ guage,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1962): 340; Alexander, “Boyle and Locke,” 66; Michael Ayers, Locke, vol. 2, 66-77. 31. Givner, “Scientific Preconceptions,” 340-42, 346, and Mandelbaum, Philosophy, Science, and Sense Perception, 1-15. 32. But see 2.21.4, 72, and 2.23.28 for the suggestion that active power may be an attribute only of “Spirits” or thinking beings, not of material substances. 33. A brief discussion of the history of these terms appears in Aaron, John Locke, 121ff. For a more extended discussion of the forms in which this distinction appears in the works of various early modern scientists, see E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science [Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1952 (reprint of 1932 edition)], 67-71, 83-90, 115-21, 130-34, 180-84. 34. Locke’s specifications of the particular primary qualities vary. I present here an inclusive listing of those qualities that he commonly, though not invariantly, refers to as “primary.” See especially 2.8.9-26 and 2.23.8-19, 30-32. 35. Scholars have extensively debated the following questions in particular. Is Locke referring to the primary qualities of observable objects, or of insensible particles? Do primary qualities resemble their ideas as “determinates” (e.g., sharing a particular shape) or as “determinables” (e.g., having shape in general)? How, in any event, is it possible to

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compare an idea with a quality existing in nature, if only ideas are present to our minds? See the various treatments of such questions in Reginald Jackson, “Locke’s Distinction Between Primary and Secondary Qualities,” in Locke and Berkeley, eds. C. B. Martin and D. M. Armstrong, 54-77; Aaron, John Locke, 116-27; Mandlebaum, Philosophy, Science, and Sense Perception, 16-28; Yolton, Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding, 47-49, 130-31; Mackie, Problems From Locke, 13-27. 36. See especially the explanation provided by Mackie, Problems From Locke, 14. Similar explanations appear in Mandelbaum, Philosophy, Science, and Sense Perception, 16-30, and E. M. Curley, “Locke, Boyle, and the Distinction Between Primary and Secondary Qualities,” Philosophical Review 81 (1972): 450-54. 37. Jackson, “Locke’s Distinction,” regards the distinction between primary and second¬ ary qualities as a distinction between qualities and powers. Cf. Mandelbaum, Philosophy, Science, and Sense Perception, 19-20. Curley, “Locke, Boyle, and the Distinction,” 44345, 450-54, explains it in terms of a difference between two forms of power. For Curley, Locke’s ambiguity on this point proceeds from the genuine difficulty in rendering a precise definition of “quality.” I do not discount the difficulty Curley describes, but believe that this ambiguity reflects a more fundamental tension in Locke’s thought, of which Locke is well aware, between natural science and common sense. 38. See Zuckert, “Fools and Knaves,” especially 562-63. 39. See Curley's distinction between “individual” and “sortal” powers (“Locke, Boyle, and the Distinction,” 447-49). 40. Cf. CU24: “knowing is seeing.” 41. Strauss, Natural Right, 249-51; Wallin, “Locke and the American Founding,” 15255; Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 185-86; Zuckert, Natural Rights, 265. 42. Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., chap. 18, p. 71. Cf. Bacon, New Organon, Book 1, aphs. 50-51. Cf. Rahe, Republics, 263, 929-30n60. 43. Gibson, Locke’s Theory of Knowledge, 199; cf. 101. Gibson goes on to observe that “Locke refrains from drawing so revolutionary a conclusion,” offering the utterly implausi¬ ble explanation that the “conception of essence, like that of substance ... is clearly a presupposition which Locke has never thought of calling in question” (199, 198). Aaron, John Locke, 204, notes “the curious relativism” of ECHU 4.6.11-12, but does not elabo¬ rate his view of the significance of these passages. See also Wolfgang Von Leyden, Seventeenth-Century Metaphysics (London: Duckworth, 1968), 159. 44. Mandelbaum, Philosophy, Science, and Sense Perception, 40. 45. See Plato, Phaedo 96a-102a; Strauss, Natural Right, 121-24. 46. See Bacon, New Organon, Book 1, aphs. 79-80. 47. Ayers, Locke, vol. 2, 67, 69; more generally, see 24-30, 65-77. 48. As we shall see, Locke makes clear that we should count our fellow humans among the natural predators, in the most literal way. See 7T 1.56-59; ECHU 1.3.9. 49. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil aph. 9; Will to Power aph. 1067. On the English origins of the doctrine of the will-to-power, see Strauss, “On the Basis of Hobbes’ Political Philosophy,” in What Is Political Philosophy?, 172. 50. In other words, nature thus conceived does not yield its own secrets to scientific inquiry, but instead acts ultimately as a kind of mirror, yielding a reflection of the precon¬ ceptions or prejudices that scientists bring to the design of their experiments. Seeking nature or objective reality, as the physicist Werner Heisenberg observes, modern man sees in the end that he always ‘confronts himself alone’ [Quoted by Hannah Arendt, “The Con¬ quest of Space and the Stature of Man,” in Between Past and Future (New York: Viking Press, 1968), 277],

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51. Strauss, “On the Basis of Hobbes’ Political Philosophy,” 178. Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, 89-90. 52. See William Bluhm, Neil Wintfield, and Stuart Teger, “Locke’s Idea of God: Rational Truth or Political Myth?” Journal of Politics 42 (1980): 437. 53. Margaret Wilson, “Superadded Properties: The Limits of Mechanism in Locke,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979): 149; 143-50. My discussion of the limits of Locke’s assent to the corpuscularian theory draws heavily from Wilson’s discussion and from that of Yolton, Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding, 56-64. 54. Yolton, Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding, 85: “Cohesion seems to have held the secret of nature for Locke, in the sense that only with that could our knowl¬ edge of body cease in any way to be observational and become conceptual.” 55. At the outset of his more introductory “Elements of Natural Philosophy,” Locke defines matter as “an extended solid substance; which being comprehended under distinct surfaces, makes so many particular distinct bodies” (Works 1877, 2.472). 56. Cf. Bacon, New Organon, Book 1, aph. 57. 57. As Hannah Arendt describes it, modem science is premised upon a demand for “the renunciation of an anthropocentric or geocentric world view” (“The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man,” 265). Cf. Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations of Modem Science, 83-90. 58. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 43-44, suggests that in his greater empirical concern for issues of classification over mathematical explanation, Locke stands in relation to Descartes and Newton roughly as Aristotle stands in relation to Pythagoras and Plato. I take this to be an aspect of Locke’s design to moderate the revolutionary enthusiasms of the first generation of modern philosophers. 59. Strauss, Natural Right, 249-51; Dunn, Political Thought of John Locke, 262-65.

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Chapter Four

Natural History and the State of Nature “To understand Political Power right, and derive it from its Original,” Locke declares near the beginning of the Second Treatise, “we must consider what State all Men are naturally in.” The state of nature is “a State of perfect Freedom” and of “Equality, wherein all the Power and Jurisdiction is reciprocal.” It is the condition of “Men living together according to reason, without a common Supe¬ rior on Earth, with Authority to judge between them” (II.4, 19; cf. 87). The state of nature thus appears in the Second Treatise initially as an abstract idea, defined in negative terms: the set of possible relations among jurally free persons,1 or persons not subject to political authority proper. In view of the abstract and negative character of this definition, one may question the basis and ultimate political significance of Locke’s conception of the state of nature. What is specifi¬ cally natural in this state of nature, and how does it provide the basis for a proper understanding of political power? Considering only this initial definition, one can understand why Dunn declares that Locke’s concept of the state of nature repre¬ sents “neither a piece of philosophical anthropology nor a piece of conjectural history,” and indeed holds “no transitive empirical content whatsoever.”2 But this judgment is mistaken. To understand this concept, one must above all remain cognizant of Locke’s emphatic affirmation, among other pieces of evi¬ dence, of the historical reality of the state of nature: “all Men are naturally in that State, and remain so, till by their own Consents they make themselves Members of some Politick Society” (11.15; also 14, 100-03).3 Notwithstanding Locke’s attempt in the Essay to maintain some rhetorical distance between the two, the state of nature illustrates the important continuity between Locke’s conception of natural science and his moral and political thought. Locke’s account of the state 107

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of nature is no mere ideological or heuristic contrivance, but to the contrary is best understood as the preeminently important application of the Baconian method of compiling natural history that he recommends in the Essay. Thus conceived, Locke’s state of nature departs from traditional understand¬ ings in important respects. Just as his empiricist epistemology and natural-histori¬ cal method represent a rejection of the premodem, Aristotelian-Scholastic science, so Locke’s account of the natural condition, like that of Hobbes, represents a rejection of much of the tradition of Christian Aristotelianism that begins with St. Thomas Aquinas and extends through Richard Hooker.4 As he rejects the teleolog¬ ical doctrine of natural species characteristic of the older science, so Locke rejects the corollary doctrine of the naturalness of political authority characteristic of the older political science. According to the natural-historical approach, knowledge of the natures of things must begin at their beginnings. One must resolve things into their simple components before considering them as coherent wholes. So it is with political societies: Locke’s account of the state of nature begins with a resolution or analysis of political society into its simple constituents. It is crucial to emphasize once again, however, that in Locke’s account this analytical method is indispensable but not in itself sufficient as a tool for advancing our understand¬ ing of the natures of things. One must investigate not only the beginnings of things or their simple constituents but also their characteristic courses of development within particular environmental conditions. With respect to human nature and the state of nature, this means that one must begin with the “theoretical individual¬ ism”5 that reveals the native self, and proceed to consider the ordinary historical development of that self in response to the promptings of its natural condition. By considering Locke’s employment of a natural-historical analysis in this way, we gain a clearer understanding of what Locke means to teach us about the problem¬ atic character of that state and about the manner in which it informs and limits a rational political response to it.

The Natural Formation of the Self: The Native Self Having defined it as a condition, or set of relations, lacking any clearly established civil law, Locke hastens to add that the state of nature “has a Law of Nature to govern it” (6), and proceeds to assert that “it is certain there is such a Law” and even that the law of nature is inscribed or innate, “plain ... in the Hearts of all Mankind” (11.12, 11). These latter assertions are difficult to reconcile, however, not only with the vigorous critique of innatism in the first book of the Essay but also with other strands of argument in the Second Treatise. In the latter work, alongside his seemingly confident assertions concerning the existence and clear promulgation of the law of nature, Locke presents his “strange Doctrine” of natural, individual executive power (7-13),6 and elaborates in somewhat scattered parcels its disorderly implications. Making explicit the most important of these implications, Locke later affirms that the general purpose of political society is to remedy the defects of the state of nature. The fundamental defect of that state is

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the absence of “an establish’d, settled, known Law” (124; see 13, 123-127). Let us begin, then, with the conservatively stated premise that the Second Treatise’s account of the state of nature calls into question humankind’s natural knowledge of and receptiveness to law as such. To put it another way, so far as he identifies the law of nature with the law of reason or with reason simply (6, 10, 11, 16, 172, 181), Locke’s account of the state of nature calls into question the naturalness of moral rationality. It extends to moral and political life the question raised in the Essay concerning the natural furnishing or providedness of the human understand¬ ing for comprehending the external world. To understand fully the problematic character of humankind’s natural knowl¬ edge of and receptiveness to law, we must understand the natural formation of the self whose task is to apprehend and to obey the laws proper to it. As we consider Locke’s application of the analytical method to this inquiry into the self’s natural formation, we begin to see the depth and radicalism of Locke’s account. For Locke’s liberalism does not begin by presuming that the natural self is fully formed, in the morally or jurally decisive respects. Contrary to a relatively common scholarly supposition, Locke’s resolution of political society into its simple constituents does not yield a state of nature of coherent individual persons or mature rational actors (let alone of stable, independent families).7 In keeping with his understanding of “natural Relations” as referring in part to “Circum¬ stances of . . . origin or beginning” (ECHU 2.28.2; cf. 2.33.7-8), Locke’s inquiry into the natural self begins with an analysis of the native self. And as this analysis makes clear, the elements with which our understanding of the self must begin are the simple operations of the human mind, even the simple, momentary constituents of conscious experience. As we have seen, the Essay’s natural-historical account begins with the farreaching claim that what we commonly consider the most “human” of the mental faculties, reason or the understanding, is naturally or originally unfurnished, in that the “Materials of all our Knowledge” are simple ideas (2.1.2).8 Of equal importance is Locke’s accompanying claim that in its basic operation of percep¬ tion, “the Understanding is meerly passive” (2.1.25; also 2.9.1; 2.21.72). The native understanding is passive not only in its inherent inability to create simple ideas or analyze existing simple ideas into any other, simpler ideas (2.2.1,2; also 2.12.1; 3.4.4, 7, 11) but also in that such rudimentary acts of inference or compo¬ sition as it may perform are purely reflexive. It is unaware of its own powers to analyze and compose complex ideas, and therefore unaware of either the difficul¬ ties or the promise inherent in these powers. More generally, it is unaware or minimally aware of its own potential for agency. Although all rational creatures are characterized by some measure of self-consciousness, some reflective aware¬ ness of a distinction between self and world (2.27.9), the native human mind experiences no more than a dimly felt intuition, little different from the perceptual experience common to some other species of animals (2.9.11-15). In a similar vein, Locke at times employs the term “Naturals” to refer to human beings who “want Reason,” or lack the active powers constitutive of the developed faculty of

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reason (3.6.22; 2.11.13, CU 6). As reflection proper on our mental operations involves attentive action, the mind is able not originally, but only “in time” to reflect on its own operations in a manner capable of producing a definite concept of the self (2.1.24; cf. 1.1.1). In fact, Locke observes, “’tis pretty late, before most Children get Ideas of the Operations of their own Minds; and some have not any very clear, or perfect Ideas of them all their Lives” (2.1.8). Moreover, although Locke refers in these passages primarily to the developmental experience of individual children, his observation concerning the native passivity of the mind suggests that for the species as well, the achievement of a state of reflective selfconsciousness occurs only over a relatively long period of time, and quite un¬ evenly. Locke’s account is similar with respect to the motivational springs of human behavior. Denying the existence of any substantive innate practical principles, Locke affirms that among the simple ideas present to our perceptions, “those, which naturally at first make the deepest, and most lasting Impression” are the ideas of pleasure and pain. Our original and still clearest, least contestable idea of the self refers simply to the subject or percipient of our pleasures and pains (ECHU 4.10.2; 4.11.8).9 These ideas possess the only real power to set the native self in motion (1.3.3; 2.7.3; 2.10.3; 2.20.2; 2.21.42ff.; also STCE 54). As pain in particular is “the most importunate of all Sensations,” what “immediately determines the Will,” in Locke’s revised account of human motivation, “is the uneasiness of desire” (2.1.21; 2.21.33; see 2.21.31-71). In civilized or socialized human beings, such uneasiness can be “ordinary” or “fantastical.” We experience the “ordinary” or “natural” uneasinesses as nature presses upon us certain con¬ stantly recurring, apparently physiological necessities, such as “Hunger, Thirst, Heat, Cold, Weariness with labour, and Sleepiness. ” The “fantastical” uneasiness¬ es, by contrast, are such primarily mental passions as “itch after Honour, Power, or Riches . . . and a thousand other irregular desires,” which represent “acquir’d habits by Fashion, Example, and Education” (2.21.45; cf. STCE 106). So far as its motivations are primarily or exclusively characterized by the ordinary, strictly natural uneasinesses, the native self that emerges from Locke’s reductive analysis closely resembles the original, natural human beings that Rousseau describes in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Like Rousseau’s natural man, who desires only “nourishment, a female, and repose” and fears only pain and hunger,10 the subject of the native Lockean consciousness seems to be a subrational, purely sensual creature, exerting itself minimally in pursuance of its own well-being and only in response to the promptings of natural necessity. Like Rousseau, Locke suggests that those mental faculties and mental passions that we consider distinctively human are not originally manifest, but are instead historical acquisitions, some emerging only in a lengthy developmental process. “Custom,” Locke observes concisely, is “a greater Power than Nature” (ECHU 1.3.25; cf. STCE 1, 164). Moreover, Locke even appears at times to suggest, again like Rousseau, that the development of the humanizing qualities, along with the advent of civilized society, is on balance a misfortune for humankind. In the Second

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Treatise, he refers to a condition “in the beginning” in which “Right and conveniency went together,” thus appearing to suggest, as would Rousseau, that the law of nature is originally immanent and self-enforcing (11.37, 51; cf. 31). He refers subsequently to the early period of human societies as a “Golden Age,” a “poor but vertuous Age” characterized by “Innocence and Sincerity,” apparently suggesting that a more conscious, careful delegation of political power becomes necessary only “in future Ages,” in consequence of the moral corruption of at least some members of society (II. 110-11; cf. 107).11 This comparison with Rousseau raises gravely serious questions concerning the adequacy of Locke’s conception of the state of nature and therefore of his political thought as a whole. Some readers, of course, will think it unhistorical to test the adequacy of Locke’s thought by comparing it with that of a later thinker who emerged from a significantly different cultural context. With respect to the general historicist objection, I have explained my position in the introductory chapter. With respect to the particular relation between Locke and Rousseau, the compari¬ son appears to me useful, and indeed vitally necessary, in light of the following reasoning. Professing to begin with the anti teleological premise with which his predecessors in modem political philosophy began, Rousseau contends that the latter failed to grasp the ultimate implications of this premise. In a famous passage in his second Discourse, Rousseau summarizes his charge: The philosophers who have examined the foundations of society have all felt the necessity of going back to the state of nature, but none of them has reached it. Some have not hesitated to attribute to man in that state the notion of the just and unjust, without troubling themselves to show that he had to have that notion or even that it was useful to him. ... All of them, finally, speaking continually of need, avarice, oppres¬ sion, desires, and pride, have carried over to the state of nature ideas they had acquired in society: they spoke about savage man and they described civil man.12

While there can be little doubt that heading the list of the philosophers thus charged is Hobbes, Rousseau makes clear that in the decisive respect, he means his indictment to include Locke as well.13 If the state of nature is to be understood nonteleologically as a condition of simplicity, self-sufficiency, and general peace, then Locke should have based his account of the state of nature exclusively upon his account of the native self. To speak not only of simplicity and peace, but instead, as Locke often does, of maturely developed human rationality and of socially acquired antisocial passions in the state of nature, would seem to involve Locke in a deep self-contradiction. The same sort of fundamental confusion would seem inherent in Locke’s conceptions of political society as essentially conven¬ tional or antinatural, and of natural rights as the true measure of political right. Locke may accept and even significantly advance the modem critique of the teleological understanding of nature, but his ambiguous account of the state of nature and of natural rights marks him, on Rousseau’s reading, no less a “cryptoteleologist”14 than Hobbes. Viewed in the light of Rousseau’s more radi¬ cally anti teleological account, according to which rights and rationality can be the

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properties only of social or civil, not natural, human beings, Locke’s principles of justice appear marred by a dogmatic rationalism or a failure in historical sensitivity similar to that which he finds so objectionable in Scholastic science. Claiming to have discovered universal principles of justice, Locke appears blind to the partial, narrowly historical, ideological character of his thought. Lockean “natural” rights and rationality are thus properties not of natural man, but only of civil man at best—and perhaps, much more narrowly, only of the members of a particular, modem “bourgeois,” or even late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English, political society. Directly or indirectly, Rousseau’s objection has proved enormously conse¬ quential. This objection bears the seed of the replacement of nature with history or convention as the standard whereby the most prominent later modem philoso¬ phers measure political thought and practice, and similarly engenders the replace¬ ment of reason with the poetic imagination as the source of the rules or ideals that give shape to political societies. It has thus contributed substantially to the discred¬ iting not only of Locke’s thought in particular, but more generally of the rational¬ ist, natural-rights constitutionalism that marked the culmination of the political thought and practice of early modernity.15 The long-term vitality of Locke’s thought and of the regime of rationalist constitutionalism whose principles Locke most ably elaborates therefore depends substantially upon the availability of resources in Locke’s political philosophy for responding effectively to the chal¬ lenge presented originally by Rousseau.

The Natural Formation of the Self: The Selfs Development in Its Natural Condition An adequate response to this formidable challenge must begin with a clarification of Locke’s usage of such terms as “nature” or “natural.” So far as it encompasses the variety of possible relationships among jurally free persons, Locke’s concept of the state of nature is in one sense ahistorical, or more precisely, panhistorical, referring in principle to any period of human history or prehistory. It is pertinent here to recall the related tension in the Essay between a more strictly scientific and a more naively historical conception of nature: nature as a thing’s internal, causal constitution, versus nature as its regularly manifest qualities. Now it does seem to be the case that for Locke the more strictly or narrowly scientific usage refers to a thing’s nature as the primary or originating cause, the native, internal source of its powers. Nonetheless, as we saw in the preceding chapter, Locke considers it an error to identify the natural strictly with the original. The nature of a thing comprehends its dispositional as well as its immanent powers. We cannot compre¬ hend the nature of a substantial being as it is simply “in itself,” abstracted from its environmental conditions. This implies that we cannot properly understand human nature simply by reference to the self as constituted by its native endow¬ ments, abstracted totally from its environment and history. The character of the

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state of nature, as Locke conceives of it, proceeds from the relation or develop¬ mental interaction of the natural self with its natural environment. In Locke’s account of the state of nature, the “natural” signifies in part the original, and in part the historically necessary and constant. Human nature includes both those properties that belong to our native endowment and those that develop by natural necessity, according to the promptings of an original, constant human condition. In contrast to Rousseau, then, Locke holds that a coherent nonteleological understanding of human nature does not require a complete abstraction from all historically developed or acquired qualities. Whereas the powers of all the various natural beings are manifest to us in accordance with the limitations imposed by our common environment, the powers of organic beings, in contrast to those of nonorganic beings, become manifest only over time, in a process of growth or development in “the ordinary course of nature.” Once again, in Locke’s account of experimental science, the promise of greatly increasing our knowledge depends upon the assumption that natural beings harbor originally and ordinarily hidden, dispositional powers that well-designed experiments can bring to sight. Although our observation of humankind is necessarily more “naive,” depending less upon experimental contrivance, the acknowledgment of dispositional powers is funda¬ mental also to Locke’s observation of the developmental course of human beings, both as individuals and as a species. It is in accordance with this more inclusive idea of “nature” that Locke, having drawn a seemingly clear distinction between natural and “fantastical’’desires, proceeds immediately to qualify that distinction. The desires of fancy are also natural desires. They are desires “which custom has made natural to us” (2.21.45; cf. STCE 42, 64, 103).16 With respect to the forma¬ tion of the human self, the distinction between nature and convention is not the distinction between the original and the acquired, but is rather the distinction between qualities that are either original or acquired necessarily, in nature’s ordinary course, and qualities that are either acquired adventitiously or contrived. It is on the basis of this reasoning that, without contradicting his nonteleolog¬ ical premise, Locke can conceive of the state of nature as encompassing such a broad diversity of historical relationships. Not only relations among truly inde¬ pendent individuals and perhaps families in a prepolitical condition but also relations among independent rulers or sovereigns, between uncivil, nonconsensual or despotic rulers and their subjects, and even between individuals within political society but temporarily beyond the reach of positive law enforcement are admissi¬ ble for Locke as instances of the state of nature.17 On this reasoning, Locke, again without contradicting himself, can ascribe to the inhabitants of the state of nature the acquired qualities of rationality and sociality. We shall see that he does so in varying measures, although not in the way or to the effect that more traditionally minded commentators have argued. Conversely, he can also ascribe to human nature the various antisocial desires and mental disorders that so frequently disturb human history. On the surface and in the relatively narrow sense of Locke’s initial definition in the Second Treatise, what the aforementioned persons and groups have in common is the merely formal relation in which they stand to each other,

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in that they are free of subjection to any common political authority. In a broader, deeper sense, however, the state of nature as Locke conceives of it is a historically constant matrix of human development and human action. It fosters the develop¬ ment of, and illuminates the relations between, reason and the various passions, or more precisely, between the rational and irrational powers of the mind. What, then, are the essentials of the natural condition within which the human self develops? What human faculties, passions, or mental powers does it call forth? What are the specific difficulties or “inconveniences” to which this condi¬ tion gives rise, and how do these inform Locke’s understanding of the rational political response?

The Development of Antisocial Desires To get to the bottom of these questions, we must first make clear that notwith¬ standing his occasional apparent suggestions to the contrary, the state of nature as Locke generally conceives of it cannot be understood as “a State of Peace, Good Will, Mutual Assistance, and Preservation” (11.19). Carefully examined, this passage implies that the state of nature is definitionally different from the state of war, but carries no implication concerning the frequency with which the two states are likely to coincide.18 Locke’s description in the same paragraph of the state of nature as the relation of “Men living together according to reason” is likewise indeterminate. While it appears at first sight to suggest a condition in which men actually observe the “law of reason,” in fact it does no more than raise the ques¬ tion whether the governance of each by his or her private reason is conducive to a state of social peace or to one of mutual belligerence. As we shall see presently, the case is similar with respect to Locke’s references to a “Golden Age” of innocence, sincerity, simplicity, virtue, and peace in the formative period of political societies. Given his many indications to the contrary, it is safest to read Locke’s apparent suggestions of the pacific, lawful character of the state of nature as a rhetorical device for avoiding unsavory associations. Having vigorously refuted the authori¬ tarianism of Filmer, Locke reasonably seeks to distance his own argument for natural freedom from the moral nihilism for which Hobbes’s account of the natural condition became notorious. Careful examination shows, however, that the actual distance between Locke’s and Hobbes’s accounts is much shorter than it may appear. To maintain the opinion that the Lockean state of nature is an only accidentally threatening condition of “uncertain peace” (which seems in itself difficult to distinguish from a Hobbesian state of war),19 Richard Ashcraft must disregard Locke’s inferences of the necessarily great inconveniences that attend a condition in which men are free to judge their own cases, and of the quickness with which those inconveniences would drive men into society (11.13, 127). Seriously overestimating the degree to which Locke presumes the effective force of the “natural community” in the state of nature, Ashcraft and others disregard Locke’s observations concerning the extreme difficulties that human beings at all

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times encounter in discovering, interpreting, and conforming with the law of nature (e.g., LVfols. 16-17, 34-35, 62-81; ECHU 1.3.9-12, 21-27; 2.28).20 A closer look at Locke’s account of the historical origins of government provides further support for this conclusion. His professed purpose in chapter eight of the Second Treatise is to defend the proposition that “that, which begins and actually constitutes any Political Society, is nothing but the consent of any number of Freemen capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into such a Society” (99). In attempting to understand this proposition, however, we should first bear in mind that political power in strict Lockean usage is not synonymous with governmental power. In contrast to the latter, political power is by definition legitimate, incorporating “a Right of making Laws” (3). Accordingly, Locke proceeds to qualify his assertion of historical consent: “Reason being plain on our side, that Men are naturally free, and the Examples of History shewing, that the Governments of the World, that were begun in Peace . . . were made by the Consent of the People” (104). From this remark alone, we can infer only that according to Locke, some governments originated in peace and consent and some did not. In reaffirming this qualification shortly thereafter, he provides a clarifying hint. He refers in the present chapter only to the peaceful beginnings of govern¬ ments, “because I shall have occasion in another place to speak of Conquest, which some esteem a way of beginning of Governments” (112). Chapter sixteen, “Of Conquest,” begins as follows: “Though Governments can originally have no other Rise than that before mentioned, nor Polities be founded on any thing but the Consent of the People; yet such has been the Disorders Ambition has filled the World with, that in the noise of War, which makes so great a part of the History of Mankind, this Consent is little taken notice of” (175). The opinion that “the noise of war” throughout history muffles or silences the voice of consent is impossible to reconcile with the opinion that the generality of governments throughout history began in peace and popular consent. Nor is this Locke’s only significant qualification or retraction of the announced thesis of chapter eight. As Pangle tartly observes, as the chapter unfolds “even the minis¬ cule part of history that is the nice, peaceful, consensual part turns out to be not so nice.”21 Ostensibly as historical evidence for the thesis of original peace and consent, Locke cites the beginnings of Rome and Venice and the founding of Tarentum by Palantus and his Spartan followers (102-03). Yet as Richard Cox has pointed out, Locke’s own sources indicate that all these cities in fact began in acts of conquest, not consent.22 Similarly, Locke quotes the sixteenth-century historian Jose de Acosta to the effect that the early Peruvians lived for a long time outside political society, and freely chose their rulers when they saw the need for govern¬ ment (102). But in fact, Acosta’s account hardly conforms with the criteria of Lockean consent. In the immediate sequel to the remark Locke quotes, Acosta elaborates his opinion of the true origin of government among the Indians: “some men excelling others in force and wit, began in time to rule and domineere as Nembrot did; so increasing by little and little, they erected the kingdoms of Peru and Mexico.” Later in the same work, after discrediting their own accounts of the

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origins of their societies, Acosta describes the original condition of the Indians as “altogether barbarous,” a condition wherein they existed “without law, without King, and without any certaine place of abode, but [went] in troupes like savage beasts,” and out of which “comminalties” develop through the “valure and knowl¬ edge of some excellent men.”23 In this context, “valure and knowledge” clearly refer not to virtue and wisdom, or to the perfections of civilized human beings, but instead to “force and wit,” to the virtues of war. Although they may have lacked any immediately compelling material cause for quarreling (11.31, 39, 51, 75), and although some societies must have enjoyed periods of internal and external peace, Locke plainly holds that early human beings characteristically engaged in frequent conflicts. Long before the advent of money and the formalizing of property rights, early societies whose members lived in poverty and simplicity nonetheless were compelled “quickly” to establish rudimentary governments precisely because they felt inclined or compelled to wage wars against their neighbors (127; cf. 107-10). The natural affection to which Locke refers—problematically, as we shall see—serves at best as a principle of internal unity. Such “golden age” as ever existed obtained at best within, not among, particular societies. However that may be, early kings qualified for office not only by paternal affection but also by stoutness and bravery (94, 105), and early societies were unified under governments not only or primarily by affection, but often by a significant element of force: “the number of petty Common-wealths in the beginning of Ages . . . always multiplied, as long as there was room enough, till the stronger, or more fortunate, swallowed the weaker” (115). In sum, upon following Locke through his rhetorical indirections, one finds in Locke’s treatment of the thesis of historical consent no serious disagreement with the observation of Hobbes: “there is scarce a Commonwealth in the world, whose beginnings can in conscience be justified.”24 This reasoning helps focus our questioning concerning Locke’s characteristi¬ cally ambiguous summary of human motivations for forming societies. The first of the “strong Obligations” that “drive” men into society, Locke observes, is “Necessity” (7T 11.77; cf. ECHU 3.1.1). When Locke specifies the forces or necessities that move us to quit the state of nature, or more precisely, to submit ourselves quickly to governmental authority, he refers to the partiality and passion inherent in human nature and to the “corruption, and vitiousness of degenerate Men” (7TII.13, 125, 128). The state of nature is “full of fears and continual dangers,” an “ill condition” that is “not to be endured,” because “the greater part” of its subjects are “no strict Observers of Equity and Justice” (123, 127). In Locke’s account as in Hobbes’s, the primary question concerns the naturalness of the human propensity toward conflict. In view of the psychological simplicity of the native self in Locke’s account, we need to know how human self-love and passion are or quickly become capable of generating the contentiousness that Locke ascribes to the natural state. This question appears especially challenging in view of Locke’s suggestions of a natural material condition of abundance (28, 31). If an original condition of abundance gave the simple, mainly sensual early

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human beings “no reason of quarrelling about Title” (51), then what in the natural condition accounts for the development of the antisocial desires? This point is of great significance for the whole of Locke’s political philoso¬ phy. As we have seen, in the Essay Locke argues that the great error of the premodem, Aristotelian-Scholastic science was its supposition of a natural corre¬ spondence between the human understanding and the external world, or, in other words, its supposition that the human understanding is naturally well provided to gain scientific knowledge of the external world. Correspondingly, the fundamental error of those commentators who see in Locke’s thought a continuation of the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition is their failure to take seriously Locke’s observa¬ tion of an analogy between the natural intellectual and material conditions—in particular their failure to see the profound significance of Locke’s conception of a natural condition of penury or unprovidedness.25 As I shall make clear in the next two chapters, I do not maintain that the natural condition as Locke conceives of it is a condition of simple privation. Yet, notwithstanding his occasional rheto¬ ric to the contrary, Locke maintains that in important respects God or nature has not “given us all things richly” (7T 11.31). As we are naturally lacking in knowl¬ edge of substances and species, so too we lack effective knowledge of the natural moral law. And as we naturally lack a maturely developed faculty of rationality, we can claim in the beginning, and indeed for much of human history, at best a partial set of fundamental rights. To clarify the real sources of “inconvenience” or danger in the state of nature, we must examine more carefully Locke’s account of the naturally unprovided material condition and the human response to it. The original material “plenty” to which Locke refers is at best a contingent condition, consisting in the ratio of natural provisions to “spenders,” originally limited in number and in the power to “ingross.” Moreover, however temporarily favorable this ratio, Locke indicates that it is fundamentally misleading to describe even this original condition as one of pure abundance. The “plenty of natural Provisions there was a long time in the World” (31; emphasis added) can refer not to the directly consumable “fruits” of nature, but only to raw material, mainly land. Comprising only “the materials of Plenty ... apt to produce in abundance” (41, emphasis added; cf. 1.41), the original condition is plentiful only in potential, not actuality. For this reason, as others have observed, Locke supersedes his references to natural material abundance with a progressively intensifying account of an original condition of “penury” whose inhabitants, failing the application of the rational labor that their condition requires, are “needy and wretched” (32, 37; also 4Iff.).26 Locke’s assessment of the real paucity of the natural provision appears most starkly in his repeated references to unimproved nature as “Waste,” along with his exponentially increasing estimates of the productive power of rational human labor relative to that of spontaneous or unimproved nature (37-38, 40-48). Because Locke presents only in a scattered, often inexplicit manner the details of the human response to this natural condition, his account of the origin and development of the antisocial desires must remain to some extent conjectural. The

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following seems to me the most reasonable construction of his argument. As described in the Essay, the native mind or self is fundamentally passive and undeveloped, floating adrift in a sea of simple ideas, with only the idea of pain or uneasiness holding any direct power to set it in motion. The degree and kind of pain or uneasiness in the natural condition must therefore provide the crucial external stimulus for the awakening of our originally dormant mental powers.27 Of the essence of laboring is pain (7T 11.30, 34, 37, 42, 43). So far as a penurious nature from the beginning refuses the easy satisfaction of even the simplest human desires, requiring human beings to labor for their subsistence, the native self must experience some significant degree of uneasiness or pain. Labor or the necessity of laboring represents for Locke the primordial uneasiness that stimulates the development of higher levels of mental activity (see ECHU 2.21.34; STCE 126). In response to this original uneasiness, the distinctively mental desires emerge. Once again, that Locke denies that there was any reason for quarrelling over material goods in the original condition—or more precisely, any reason for quar¬ relling about property “so establish’d, ” taken directly from nature and limited to one’s immediate use (7T 11.31; emphasis added)—does not entail a denial that there were frequent quarrels among the early human beings. Similarly, that some or even many people may not immediately develop antisocial desires in response to the pain of want or the necessity of laboring constitutes no cause for denying that such a response lies at the root of the disturbances of the state of nature. To explain the fearfulness of that state, Locke need not argue that all or even a majority manifest the same active, aggressive desires at the same time in response to their natural condition. Locke does not argue that early human beings in general were moved directly by the natural penury to any significant level of industry or external activity. To the contrary, he acknowledges not only that some peoples continue even to the present day in conditions of relative economic underdevelop¬ ment (37, 41, 43, 45, 48-49) but also that even members of more developed societies commonly find it difficult to extend their attentions beyond the present or immediate (ECHU 2.21.64-68; STCE 45, 48). Yet the continuance of peoples in conditions of material simplicity neither proves their genuine contentment with such conditions nor establishes the normally peaceful, plentiful character of the natural condition, any more than the relatively common fact of popular acquies¬ cence in or nonresistance to despotic government proves the benign character of despotism (cf. TT 11.75, 94, 107-110 with 92, 223, 230). Notwithstanding his suggestion that for the most part, early men accepted without obvious discontent “the equality of a simple poor way of liveing,” which confined “their desires within the narrow bounds of each mans smal propertie” (107; cf. 28, 31-32, 51, 75, 110, 111), Locke does not discount the possibility that theft might be the first of the labor-saving arts discovered by human beings. In at least a few, the passion of covetousness might be a natural outgrowth of the early wanderers’ subjection to uncertain, penurious material circumstances (34). Locke provides a more definite and far-reaching suggestion, however, also in the Second Treatise's chapter “Of Property.” His generalization concerning the

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early humans’ response to their condition contains a significant qualification: “Men, at first, for the most part” contented themselves with the offerings of unimproved nature (45; emphasis added). While most are unmoved to external action by their natural penury, at least a few are discontented and desire more. In some human beings, from the earliest period onward, operates some deep and dangerous desire to conquer necessity, to overcome the natural penury by expand¬ ing the realm of one’s own freedom and power. In the Second Treatise, this “desire of having more than Men needed,” manifesting itself as an “amor sceleratus habendi, ” represents from the beginning the main engine of human conten¬ tiousness (37, 111; cf. 92, 115).28 More clearly still in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke identifies the “love of Dominion,” whether in the form of a desire to be submitted to by others or as a more general love of “Propriety and Possession,” as the root “of almost all the Injustice and Contention, that so disturb Humane Life” (103-05). One can say that the natural self is motivated primarily by hunger,29 according to Locke, provided that one understands the potentially vast expanse of hungers that may develop out of the primordial one. In a manner recalling Machiavelli’s distinction between the two basic “hu¬ mors” found in all cities,30 Locke’s account of the root of injustice suggests a still more stark aboriginal class division between a majority content to submit to the force of natural necessity and a relative few who seek to overcome it. The emer¬ gence of a class of warlords, oligarchs, or despots, standing over a more timid, slothful majority, appears more natural, in the narrow sense of the term, than the development of the “rational and industrious” class, the genuine promoters and defenders of fundamental rights (7TII.34). The questions that this division raises concerning Locke’s doctrine of egalitarian natural rights will receive further consideration in the following two chapters. At present it suffices to observe that although it is certainly real and significant, this basic division between types of psychological response to the natural condition is less sharp, in Locke’s account, than it may appear. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke does qualify the Essay’s premise that the mind is as “White Paper,” naturally unfurnished, allowing that important differences in individuals’ psychological characters may be traceable to differences in their native constitutions (66, 101-02). Yet he also suggests, referring to “Children” in general, that the “love of Power and Domin¬ ion shews it self very early” and functions as “the first Original of most vicious Habits, that are ordinary and natural” (103). Albeit in varying degrees and as¬ pects, “we are all, even from our Cradles, vain and proud Creatures” (119; also 38, 148). In the light of this suggestion, it appears unlikely that the relative few who refuse to submit to the force of necessity in the Second Treatise’s account harbor a fanciful desire that others do not feel. As we shall see more clearly in the next section, Locke suggests instead that these few express actively a desire that others express only passively, moving them to endeavor to escape the laborious, necessitous natural condition, rather than simply to imagine themselves well provided and thus to disregard the natural imperative of productive industry.

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As elaborated thus far, Locke’s account holds that the penury of the natural condition stimulates the development of specifically mental and sometimes antiso¬ cial desires, and that the characteristic dangers of the natural state proceed from the actions of a few truly criminal, “degenerate Men” (7TII.128; also 10, 11, 16) or from the nervous desire for security that the degenerate tend to raise in others. In either case, the fact that that condition raises in us at least a common disposition or “aptfness] to grasp at Power,” such that “the greater part” therein are “no strict Observers of Equity and Justice,” suffices to establish its general dangerous¬ ness (143, 123).

Partisanship and the Diseases of the Mind To focus on this Hobbesian dialectic of pride and fear is to suggest a concep¬ tion of the state of nature as an instance of the “prisoners’ dilemma” familiar to contemporary rational-choice theory, in which the endeavor of all to fulfill their grandest desires brings about their least-desired outcomes. Yet, although Locke’s account conforms with this model in some respects, for Locke the appearance of specifically despotic desires, along with the nervous concern for security that they engender, does not fully explain the disorders inherent in the state of nature. Rather, the appearance of such desires represents for Locke only a particular—and by no means the most profound—instance of a general class of mental disorders that develop in response to the natural condition of penury. The crucial point is that, although it stimulates heightened levels of mental activity, the experience of natural penury in itself does not necessarily raise the level of rational activity. The “partiality” to which Locke traces “the Inconveniences of the State of Nature” (7T II. 13; cf. 125) not only carries the relatively narrow significance of an excessive or exclusive concern for one’s personal interests but also refers more generally to an excessive attachment to one’s own—to one’s own family, tribe, nation, country, or sect, and above all to one’s own opinions.31 The essential danger of partisanship as Locke conceives of it lies in a resistance to rational appeal. “[W]hat one of a hundred,” Locke demands, “of the zealous bigots in all parties ever examined the tenets he is so stiff in, or ever thought it his business or duty so to do?” (CU 34). The “greatest part of the Partisans of most of the Sects in the World,” he com¬ plains further, “are resolved to stick to a Party, that Education or Interest has engaged them in; and there, like the common Soldiers of an Army, shew their Courage and Warmth, as their Leaders direct, without ever examining, or so much as knowing the Cause they contend for” (ECHU 4.20.18). As this last remark indicates, partisanship as Locke diagnoses it proceeds from active as well as from passive causes, from a desire to command as well as from a desire to submit.32 To say the least, Locke doubts that the prejudices of partisan leaders proceed from honest, well-intended errors in judgment. “If we could but see the secret Motives, that influenced the Men of Name and Learning in the World, and the Leaders of Parties, we should not always find, that it was the embracing of Truth for its own sake, that made them espouse the Doctrines, they

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owned and maintained” (4.20.17). More pointedly, Locke suggests that in the minds of many partisan enthusiasts, love or respect for the truth is corrupted by a lust for power: “[H]ow almost can it be otherwise, but that he should be ready to impose on others Belief, who has already imposed on his own?” (4.19.2). He warns further that whoever tyrannizes over his own and others’ faculties can hardly be trusted to refrain from tyrannizing over others’ bodies, their entire persons, as well. For it is no “small power it gives one Man over another, to have the Authority to be the Dictator of Principles, and Teacher of unquestionable Truths” (1.4.24). The observation that the active or efficient cause of partisan bias lies in the desire for dominion or self-aggrandizement recurs as a theme throughout much of Locke’s corpus. In his early manuscript on the power of the civil magistrate over indifferent matters in religion, he declares that a proper religious liberty does not include “a liberty for some men at pleasure to adopt themselves children of God, and from thence . . . proclaim themselves heirs of the world; not a liberty for ambition to pull down well-framed constitutions ... not a liberty to be Christians so as not to be subjects” (ETG 121). Supporting the opposite constitutional princi¬ ple in his 1667 “Essay Concerning Toleration,” he similarly decries the propensity of “depraved ambitious human nature” to assume “something of a godlike power” in the attempt to enforce uniformity in religious worship.33 The Letter Concerning Toleration is replete with such imputations, while the Essay's assault upon the Scholastics in particular includes not only the penetrating critique of scholastic epistemology and science recounted in the preceding chapter, but also a highly polemical exposure of (alleged) scholastic motivations. In effect, the “Schoolmen and Metaphysicians” as Locke presents them are in the realm of thought what the “Quarrelsom and Contentious” (7T 11.34) are in the realm of practice. Their fondness for displaying rhetorical virtuosity serves ultimately to precipitate an intellectual state of war, wherein words and arguments serve as weapons and the purpose for their exchange is not to enlighten but only to prevail (ECHU 3.10.7; also 3.5.16; CU 42). Their errors represent no mere inadvertencies, but rather “wilful Faults and Neglects" (3.10.1) aimed at enhancing the “Glory and Esteem,” along with the “Authority and Dominion” of their authors (3.10.8, 9). In partisan associations as Locke conceives of them, this opportunistic ambition on the part of a few leaders joins in a despotic collaboration with the psychological passivity and neediness of their numerous followers. These latter forms of partisan motivation are especially revealing of the depth and breadth of the problem of the state of nature. Given Locke’s understanding of the laborious character of reason¬ ing and the natural or reflexive inclination of most people to alleviate the natural penury with a minimal expenditure of labor, the commonness of the human propensity to render nonrational assent comes as little surprise. Partisan assent often attests simply to the great power of custom in forming our minds and charac¬ ters, which in turn derives in large part from our native passivity and from the laborious character of serious inquiry. As with material property, it is far easier to acquire one’s opinions (and to some degree one’s social attachments) by inheri-

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tance than by industry. And unlike the opportunity for material inheritance, the opportunity to inherit opinions extends to virtually all members of society (3.10.4). In addition, the complex of passive causes that sustain partisan affilia¬ tions includes the basic desire for security, which, broadly understood, carries several troublesome manifestations. Taken together, our native mental sloth and our strong desire for corporeal and psychological security engender in many of us a dangerous errancy and precipitancy in submitting ourselves to one or another form of social authority. Viewed in this light, the problem of the state of nature in Locke’s account derives less from the natural power of egoism or self-interest narrowly conceived, and more from the fact that men too easily allow the expan¬ sion of their spheres of vital concernment, so that we are commonly all too willing to surrender our responsibility, absorbing ourselves uncritically in this or that collectivity or placing ourselves at the disposal of this or that social, moral, or governmental authority.34 Several aspects of the historical human response to the natural condition serve to illustrate Locke’s argument. In the Second Treatise, the most obvious of these concerns the historical origin of governmental authority. Locke acknowledges that a virtually unlimited tacit consent to “nursing Fathers” or to those preeminent in the martial virtues represents the easiest, most spontaneously natural and histori¬ cally probable response to the immediate need for governmental authority. So far as they had not “felt the Oppression of Tyrannical Dominion,” primitive subjects saw no need to limit the prerogative power of familiar rulers. Thus early govern¬ mental power was virtually nothing but prerogative power (107, cf. 74-76, 105, 111). This consideration does not deter Locke in the preceding chapter from describing the innocence that fosters such original consent as “negligent” and “unforeseeing” (94; cf. STCE 67). In hindsight, the act of submitting to an unlim¬ ited governmental authority, however predictable, appears as an unreflective, precipitant response to the immediate manifestation of a general necessity. It appears as the reflex of a natively, habitually passive mind, a creature of present sensation lacking any developed capacity for responsibility and eager to surrender its liberty in order to relieve its present uneasiness with minimal exertion. So far as one may consider early authority to be grounded in consent, the original tacit consent does not resolve but rather exacerbates the problem of the state of nature. By submitting to a governmental power that may begin benignly but promises to mm despotic, early subjects escape one state of nature only to lapse into a new, potentially more dangerous form of that state (7T 11.90-94). And the thoughtless¬ ness that accompanies the endeavor to relieve an urgent present uneasiness is hardly confined to primitive human beings (see ECHU 2.21.46, 64). A second, still more powerful indication of the deeper problem inherent in the state of nature appears upon consideration of the “Inclination” that, along with “Necessity” and “Convenience,” plays a part in moving us to form societies (11.77). Although Locke’s references to a social inclination in human nature may seem at odds with his descriptions of an individualistic state of nature and espe¬ cially with the Essay’s more radical account of the elements of self-consciousness,

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we need not conclude that Locke’s appeals to a natural human sociality are purely rhetorical. The natural condition of penury as well as its own sexual inclinations would move the Lockean self quickly into regular social encounters of one form or another.35 It is reasonable to conjecture that notwithstanding its native individu¬ alism, that self would be prompted soon to develop specifically social desires. One must consider, in this context, the significant degree of flexibility or capaciousness that Locke builds into his basic definition of the self as “that conscious thinking Thing,” which is “capable of Happiness or Misery, and so is concern’d for it self, as far as that consciousness extends” (ECHU 2.27.17; emphasis partially added). As Locke indicates elsewhere, this capacity for self-extension not only enables us to achieve a personal identity over time, but also supplies a basis for specifically social affections. Although he maintains that the desire for self-preservation is the “first and strongest Desire God Planted in Men,” Locke observes in us a capacity, if not a need, to expand the sphere of our personal identification and concernment so that we are able in effect to consider the well-being of others, especially that of our offspring, as a part of our own (7TI.88; cf. 86, 97). Locke’s affirmations of a natural human sociality provide a further focal point for the controversy between commentators who ascribe to Locke a fundamentally Aristotelian-Scholastic affirmation of an orderly, lawful human nature and others who view Locke as a radically modem individualist. Neither of these readings is fully warranted. As I have argued throughout, Locke’s political thought no more belongs to the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition than does his epistemological and scientific thought. His recognition of a powerful element of natural human soci¬ ality does not place his political thought within the older tradition, because he does not see in it a natural inclination toward lawfulness or virtue. At the same time, his affirmation of human sociality cannot be understood as an instance of exoteric rhetoric on the part of a radical modem individualist. Locke holds that human social inclinations are both natural and dangerous. So far as they manifest the errant, anarchic potential of the capacity for self-extension, our social inclinations serve as much to intensify as to correct the disorders of the natural condition. The more familiar aspect of the problem with human sociality is that our affections tend to promote division and contention with others in proportion as they bind us to our own. Just as we experience friends and loved ones as exten¬ sions of ourselves, so we sense and mistmst the alienness of others. There is perhaps no more telling indication of Locke’s departure from the classical and Christian traditions of political thought than his treatment of the significance of love or friendship in public life. For Aristotle, friendship serves as a model for a morally healthy political community, even if the best friendship ultimately tran¬ scends political life.36 In the Second Treatise, by contrast, Locke makes three specific references to friendship, none of which upholds friendship as a model for civil or political association, none of which even mentions the power of friendship to bring meaning and completion to human life, and all of which indicate the divisiveness that it may engender. In his discussion of executive power in the state of nature, Locke argues that it is unreasonable for individuals to be judges in their

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own cases because “Self-love will make Men partial to themselves and their Friends” (13). In discussing parental rights and obligations, he mentions that a person may owe “defence to his Child or Friend” (70). Finally, as we have seen, upon supposing that the members of early political societies must have had “some Acquaintance and Friendship together,” he immediately infers that they must have had “greater Apprehensions of others, than of one another” (107) and proceeds to characterize their foreign relations as at least intermittently belligerent. It seems to be the weakness not of our capacity to love others, but of our capacity to love others equally that leads Locke to diverge from Hooker in ex¬ plaining the basis of equality in the “independent” status of individuals rather than in a species-based obligation to mutual love (5, 6).37 Nor does Locke contradict this mistrust of the effects of affectional bonds in public life, in his praise of the virtue of civility (the “first, and most taking of all the Social Virtues”) in Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Locke recommends the cultivation of civility not to produce a spirit of communal concord, friendship, or like-mindedness, but instead to help preserve the peace in societies of rights-claiming individuals, and to enable independent pursuers of happiness, by avoiding offense and respecting others, better to make their way in the world (93, 109, 143).38 As I shall make clear in the following chapter, I do not maintain that Locke as a person or as a thinker is insensitive to the goodness of friendship or love. My point here is only to draw attention to the depth of his sensitivity to the dangers that the social affections often pose to the impartial pursuance of justice in public life. Human sociality in Locke’s analysis stems in large part from an experience of neediness, a desire for emotional or psychological security that corresponds to and indeed often supersedes the desire for corporal security. The capacity for self¬ extension manifests itself not only in a desire for dominion but also, more pas¬ sively and more commonly, in a sensitivity to one’s reputation. Whoever “imag¬ ines Commendation and Disgrace, not to be strong Motives on Men,” Locke observes, “seems little skill’d in the Nature, or History of Mankind: the greatest part whereof he shall find to govern themselves chiefly, if not solely, by this Law of Fashion” (ECHU 2.28.12). Indeed, “Esteem and Disgrace are, of all others, the most powerful Incentives to the Mind, when once it is brought to relish them” (STCE 56). The desire of a social being to be well regarded, or more strongly, to feel a part of a community, to belong, makes of all of us “a sort of Camelions, that still take a Tincture from things near us” (STCE 67). Absent proper regula¬ tion, this desire poses clear difficulties for the cause of legitimate government. So far as the challenging of orthodox or fashionable opinions often invites the oppro¬ brium of one’s fellows, the desire for a communal identification, or its concomi¬ tant fear of ostracism, stands in considerable tension with the exercising of critical rationality. “Who is there,” Locke pointedly wonders, “hardy enough to contend with the reproach, which is every where prepared for those, who dare venture to dissent from the received Opinions of their Country or Party?” (ECHU 1.3.25; cf. 2.28.12). In its more natural or unregulated expressions, the love of esteem tends to appear as a powerful psychological neediness, in the grip of which we precipi-

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tantly and stubbornly submit ourselves to this or that communal authority, drawing emotional comfort from a communal identification while fueling a spirit of irratio¬ nal tribal exclusiveness that corrupts and fractures domestic public life or exhausts itself in foreign wars. Moreover, among such “busy-minded” creatures as human beings, bearing such expansive mental powers, the social desires for esteem and communal belonging are commonly interwoven with a specifically doctrinal desire. It is “the Nature of Mankind, and the Constitution of Humane Affairs: Wherein most Men cannot... be at quiet in their Minds, without some Foundation or Principles to rest their Thoughts on” (ECHU 1.3.24; CU 6, 26).39 Such indeed is our desire for doctrines or grounding principles, “how remote soever from Reason,” that “Men even of good Understanding in other matters, will sooner part with their Lives, and whatever is dearest to them, than suffer themselves to doubt, or others to question, the truth of them” (1.3.21; STCE 146; CU 34, 41; LN fol. 44). As it often eagerly and uncritically assumes communal identifications to gain a sense of esteem or belonging, so the mind grasps at theoretical or spiritual principles to gain the security (as well as the pride) of an ordering meaning. The problem with the desire for doctrinal foundations is that so far as it ex¬ presses a more basic psychological neediness, it obstructs rather than supports the desire for truth or for rational self-disposal. Although the power of reason proper marks the ultimate distinction, the earliest and often the most visible distinction between human beings and the lower animals appears in the operation of the “fancy” or imagination.40 While it is the power of abstraction that “puts a perfect Distinction betwixt Man and Brutes” and makes us uniquely capable of science, it is this same power that makes us uniquely prone to fantasy and even to madness, to imaginative distortions of reality (ECHU 2.11.10-13; 2.33.1-4, 9).41 We are creatures of “Fancy,” motivated by “fantastical” desires, not only or primarily in our love for dominion or esteem. The most characteristically human of the “Wants of Fancy,” in Locke’s account, is an unselfconscious desire for fantasy, a desire to submit to the productions of our own errant imaginations. Viewed in this light, Locke’s exaggeration of the distinction between natural and fanciful desires appears intended to underline the dangerousness of the latter. An acute sensitivity to the human propensity for willfulness, fantasy, or “busymindedness” not only underlies his urgent insistence in the Two Treatises on the proper limits of governmental power but also runs as a recurrent, unifying theme throughout his work. From the beginning, Locke finds the boundlessly, errantly productive human imagination (ECHU 2.1.2, 16) at work in many of the mental pathologies that constantly obstruct, threaten, or subvert the cause of civil govern¬ ment. “[’Tis] Phansye,” he observes in a 1659 letter, that “is the great com¬ mander of the world,” that “rules us all under the title of reason,” acting as “the great guide both of the wise and the fooleish” (CJL #81). More profoundly than the antagonism between the desires of dominion and security narrowly conceived, the naturally errant or anarchic character of the mind enables Locke to explain why “Robberies, Murders, Rapes, are the Sports of Men set at Liberty from

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Punishment and Censure” (ECHU 1.3.9). As a state of “perfect Freedom,” the state of nature harbors the constant danger of degenerating into a state of complete mental license, in which the mind’s power to create whole worlds of fantasy operates virtually without rational guidance or regulation. The overridingly important historical constant among human beings is the extreme fragility of reason, manifest in our easy susceptibility to the most extravagant, grotesque mental or psychological disorders. Locke’s comment in the First Treatise on Vega’s account of Peruvian cannibalism is worth quoting at length: Thus far can the busie mind of Man carry him to a Brutality below the level of Beasts, when he quits his reason, which places him almost equal to Angels. Nor can it be otherwise in a Creature, whose thoughts are more than the Sands, and wider than the Ocean, where fancy and passion must needs run him into strange courses, if reason, which is his only Star and compass, be not that he steers by. The imagination is always restless and suggests variety of thoughts, and the will, reason being laid aside, is ready for every extravagant project; and in this State, he that goes farthest out of the way, is thought fittest to lead, and is sure of most followers. . . . (58) This is the natural mental condition of humankind at its extreme, of which we must be ever cognizant in our attempts to construct and maintain political societ¬ ies. Locke’s assessment of our errant susceptibility to partisan devotions reveals the profound significance of his insistent, colorful denials of the existence of a natural moral consensus. Relaying the reports of “authors worthy of confidence that entire nations have been, on their own admission, pirates and brigands” (LN fols. 7071), he seems to take a certain relish in deploying the lurid evidence gleaned from his extensive exploration of the travel literature of his day to contest the traditional opinion that the law of nature is immanent, visible in moral sentiments and prac¬ tices common to humankind.42 “Have there not been whole Nations,” he repeats in the Essay, “and those of the most civilized People,” among whom such prac¬ tices as exposure, parricide, infanticide, and cannibalism are widespread and publicly approved (1.3.9ff.; cf. LA fols. 66-76; TT 1.56-59)? As entire nations engage in them approvingly, such grisly practices are not assignable merely to the deviancy of a few antisocial individuals. More important, contrary to some recent interpretations, such practices are not symptoms of the rebellious, guilty depravity of the fallen, nor are they expressions of a natural human “transgressiveness.”43 They are actions presumed by their agents to be right, taken in conformity with a communal moral code (1.3.13). They exemplify the “strange courses” upon which “fancy and passion” steer us, absent regulation by any instinctive moral sense,44 by any natural ordering of the desires, or by reason (7T 1.58). So forcefully does Locke emphasize “the variability of moral and political ideas,” Eugene Miller comments, that he brings us to “wonder how the agreement necessary to political life can ever be secured.”45 Exposing the speciousness of his occasional references to a “natural Community” of mankind (7TII. 128; 6), the massive historical fact of moral diversity confirms Locke’s assessments of the capacious errancy of the

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human imagination, the natural fragility of human reason, and the hiddenness of the law of nature.46 Of all the forms of partisan devotion, those associated with religion or theology merit special notice as the deepest and most dangerous, grounded in the deepest uneasiness engendered by the natural condition. In a 1681 journal entry that expresses a concern central to his entire career, Locke observes that the “three great things that govern mankind are Reason, Passion, and Superstition; the first governs a few, the two last share the bulk of mankind ... but superstition is most powerful, and produces the greatest mischiefs.”47 Notwithstanding his oftenrepeated declaration that the true ground of morality can only be “the Will and Law of a God, who sees Men in the dark, has in his Hand Rewards and Punish¬ ments, and Power enough to call to account the Proudest Offender” (ECHU 1.3.6; 2.28.8), Locke worries unceasingly about our susceptibility to “the tyranny of a religious rage” (ETG 120). Surveying “those Absurdities, that fill almost all the Religions which possess and divide Mankind,” he laments that “Religion which should most distinguish us from Beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational Creatures, above Brutes, is that wherein Men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than Beasts themselves” (ECHU 4.18.11).48 In a primitive, patriarchal form, the religious consciousness appears very early in the development of human society, originating in a combination of “dread and craft” and becoming in time socially pervasive, effectively sanctifying societies’ main institutions and customs (RC 238; TT 11.76, 94; 1.58; ECHU 4.19.5). In his unpublished Questions Concerning the Law of Nature, in the course of refuting the proposition that humankind could be self-created, Locke declares that a being who loved man would not have created man mortal. The fact of mortality, or perhaps our awareness of that fact, is inconsistent with human happiness (LN fol. 55).49 However that may be, for humankind in general, death is the summum malum, “the King of Terrors” (STCE 115). Fear of death, as well as of invisible spirits or “superior unknown beings,” is surely the major element of the “dread” in which the religious consciousness originates. At all times, however, our common susceptibility to such fears disposes most of us to embrace some form of religious faith and thereupon to submit to some form of priestly authority (Works 1823, 7.135; STCE 138, 115; cf. LA fol. 55). Moreover, accompanying this extreme aversion is an equally extreme and dangerous desire. In an unpublished fragment entitled “Amor Patriae,” Locke remarks pregnantly that “the chief cause, that keeps us a longing after our coun¬ try” is a certain desire for permanence: “Whilst we are abroad we look upon ourselves as strangers there . . . and the mind is not easily satisfied with anything it can reach to the end of. But when we are returned to our country, where we think of a lasting abode, wherein to set up our rest, an everlasting abode ... we do not propose to ourselves another country whither we think to remove.”50 Yet the love of country thus described would seem capable of pacifying the desire for permanence or the aversion to transience only in a relatively mild form. Locke s observation moves us to question whether the thought of a “lasting abode in one s

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country can provide meaningful comfort for those truly mindful of the perishabil¬ ity of all things human or accustomed to look forward to a spiritual life after one’s physical death. For the broadest portion of Locke’s intended audience, if not for humankind in general, the greatest happiness or summum bonum consists in the “infinite eternal Joys” of a heavenly afterlife (2.21.38). Locke of course acknowl¬ edges that not all human beings experience this summum bonum as an overruling, compelling desire. Nonetheless, because the necessary companion of desire is uneasiness, in Locke’s psychology, the implication is that a fixation on the absent, infinite happiness of heaven would generate an uneasiness sufficiently powerful to unsettle our rationality. It would make us “constantly and infinitely miserable” (2.21.53, 44; cf. 2.28.8-12).51 So we are moved, by some combination of immod¬ erate fear and restless longing, to adopt the “strange Opinions, and extravagant Practices” that constitute almost all the world’s religions (ECHU 4.18.11). As in our submission to governmental authority and our formation of commu¬ nal identifications, our desire to alleviate the uneasiness of the human condition disposes us to a degree of precipitancy in our religious or doctrinal affiliations. And once again, this common disposition provides an opportunity for a relative few to claim divine authorization for their assertions of distinction or dominion. Still more generally, Locke’s observations concerning the desire for doctrinal foundations, and in particular concerning our uneasiness in the knowledge of mortality, reveal the germ of a profound mental disease whose extreme symptoms include the endeavor to escape or radically to transform the human condition. Further illustrating the panhistorical character of the state of nature, this diagnosis suggests a psychological kinship between the religious sectarians who command Locke’s immediate concern and later ideological millenarians, bent on overcoming the flux of history through revolutionary activity. Whether out of fear or pride, it is only too human for us to endow our particular devotions with transcendent significance, to create gods or visions of human salvation or completion and attempt to stride the earth as their prophets and soldiers. In sum, the state of nature represents much more than the condition of perfect freedom and jural equality to which Locke vaguely refers at the outset of the Second Treatise. Beneath his conception of a condition of perfect freedom and uncertain obligation lies a deeper understanding of the natural condition as the naturally disorderly mental condition. In its negative aspect, the state of nature represents the constantly threatening condition of lawlessness, or of resistance to reasonable, civil, legitimate government, engendered by the operation of certain disorderly mental desires that are themselves conceived originally in response to the natural condition of penury. Although the primordial painfulness or uneasiness of the natural condition raises a desire quickly to escape that condition, the pri¬ marily negative or aversive character of the motivation leaves the proper avenue of escape and the ultimate destination indeterminate. As Locke’s historical cata¬ loguing of the extremes of moral diversity or dissensus attests, for the naturally slothful human mind, the response to the essential uneasiness of the human condi¬ tion is characterized less often by genuine rationality than by sheer escapist

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fantasy. In a different context, Locke touches the core of the problem when he deprecates the man whose “understanding is to him like Fortunatus’s purse, which is always to furnish him without ever putting anything into it beforehand” (CU 38). In our imaginative longing for the easy, idle providedness of Fortunatus, we are prone not only to commit the far-reaching intellectual error of presuming our words to refer to real things but also to submit to or to adopt the pretensions of sovereign providers of one form or another. The result is that the true penury of the natural condition is left unattended and the dangerous human propensity for partisanship and ultimately war intensifies. The alarming ease with which the human imagination and the subrational desires seduce their proper governor constitutes the most urgent fact about the state of nature, of which we must be ever cognizant in our attempts to constitute and to maintain political societies.

The State of Nature and the Struggle for Agency Locke sees in the state of nature not merely the original condition of humankind, but an ever-present, threatening potentiality. As our natural mental as well as jural and material condition, the state of nature holds normative significance for us, in part by supplying a negative, aversive standard for the regulating of social and political practice. Locke presents his account of the disorderly natural condition not merely to inform us of the reasons for the original formation of political societies, but more importantly to remind us of their natural fragility and of the need to regulate our opinions, passions, and actions accordingly.52 Against the mental disorders of that condition, manifested in a willful or slothful escapism or in an uncritical extension or surrender of one’s care for oneself to a tribal or sectarian collectivity, Locke implores us to constitute ourselves more solidly as agents—as responsible, rights-bearing persons. As we learn to confront actively and unflinchingly our natural condition, we come to understand labor (broadly conceived) less as a burden to be shirked or imagined away than as the essential means whereby we take responsibility for our lives. We must disencumber our¬ selves of supposedly unquestionable and unalterable claims upon our labor, obedience, and devotion, and come to understand our subjection to governmental authority, our other social and communal affiliations, and in general the conditions that determine our prospects for happiness, as the results of our own acts of rational consent and deliberate choice. We must gather our natively passive perceptions and our fragments of momentary self-consciousness into a coherent, unitary whole, with an identity over time, a more active, critical sense of care or “concernment,” and a capacity to develop a more disciplined, deliberate, realistic conception of happiness. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke suggests that “what every one is taken with” is also the object of his educational efforts: “A Mind Free, and Master of it self, and all its Actions” (66). This conception of the self as agent or active power appears as a thematic concern throughout Locke’s major works. In the Essay, Locke declares generally that “Action [is] the great Business of Mankind” (2.22.10) and urges his readers

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to accept little on faith, regulating actively and critically their assent to theoretical and practical propositions alike (1.4.22; 4.18.8, 10; 4.19.14; cf. LCT, 26-27, 47). Also in the Essay, one can understand his suggestion that what distinguishes us from the lower animals is less the possession of an immortal soul than the mental power of abstraction, along with his revised account of the determination of the will, as exemplifying further Locke’s emphasis on the element of activity or laboring in human rationality (2.11.10-11; 2.21.31ff.). Similarly, throughout Of the Conduct of the Understanding, Locke insists upon conceiving of the various forms of error to which the mind is prone as vices that we are responsible for correcting. And in the Second Treatise the doctrines of natural liberty, consensual government, productive appropriation, and resistance of illegitimate power depend at least proximately upon a conception of the individual as “Master of himself, and Proprietor of his own Person, and the Actions or Labour of it” (44). Reflecting upon his understanding of the problem of the state of nature and the activist response that it requires, one may be tempted to view Locke as a captain in the modem, Machiavellian war of human virtue against nature or fortune.53 As fortune supplies the Machiavellian prince with only the opportunity for greatness, so nature provides only “the materials of Plenty” with respect to our bodily subsistence and comfort, according to Locke, and likewise appears to provide only the materials of selfhood or rational liberty in endowing us with a desire and a unique capacity for happiness. Looking forward rather than backward along the same line of reasoning, one might even find in Locke’s opposition between the idling, delusionary activity of the imagination and the progressive, productive activity of rational laboring a prefiguring of Marx’s opposition between merely interpreting the world and remaking it through revolutionary praxis.54 But Locke issues no generalized call to remake the world. However deeply impressed by the creative potential of rational human labor, Locke betrays no faith in the power of human creativity to effect a fundamental transformation of the human condition, to establish humankind as the absolutely sovereign masters and owners of nature. The futility of any such attempt appears in the logic of Locke’s hedonistic psychology. If the motivating condition of rational activity is the experience of uneasiness in one form or another, and if the condition of true human sovereignty must be a condition of final abundance or of liberation from unease, then the achievement of that condition would dissolve the motive for the very activity required to sustain it. It would thus prepare a regression toward the mental listlessness that characterizes the native self (see ECHU 2.7.3-4; 2.21.34ff.). Like Scipio’s Carthage, the natural condition of penury must remain as a source of salutary moral discipline—if not in the form of an actual condition of material poverty, at least as an ever-present, ever-threatening potentiality, an adversary for us to battle but never finally to subdue. Moreover, even if it is held to be no more than a guiding aspiration, from Locke’s rationalist perspective the principle of pure human sovereignty or auton¬ omy must be a likely source of fundamental moral misdirection. While traditional conceptions of radical individual dependence upon divine, natural, or social

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providers tend to enervate reason as they excite the imagination, Locke suggests that the extreme alternative harbors a parallel danger. Encouraging each to con¬ sider himself judge and even legislator in his own case, the principle of pure human sovereignty itself liberates and flatters the love of dominion (7T1.10, 106, 11.90-94). Above all, so far as this principle requires that we refuse to submit to any rule not of our own making, it delegitimates the governance of reason itself, which aims at discovering, not making, the rules to which we are properly sub¬ ject. To aspire to a quasi-divine condition of pure sovereignty or autonomy is to lose sight of the grounds of human choice, elevating a principle of arbitrary, willful self-creation or creative self-expression over one of rational self-govern¬ ment. It is to resist the rule of reason in favor of the very rule of subrational passion and imagination that generates the greatest dangers associated with the state of nature.55 In this way too, such an aspiration is ultimately self-contradic¬ tory. In their revolt against the enthusiasms engendered by premodem philosophy and theology, modem political philosophers must remain wary of their own susceptibility to revolutionary enthusiasm, taking care to avoid replacing one form of the politics of the imagination with another. In response to assertions of radical human sovereignty, nature sooner or later reasserts its own sovereignty. Neither a simple submission to natural necessity nor an assertion of pure human sovereignty can sustain the achievement of rational agency that constitutes, in Locke’s argument, the centerpiece of the proper response to the problem of the state of nature. As our natural condition subjects us to the power of a painful or threatening necessity, rational action must consist in striving for liberation from the natural condition. Yet as our attempts finally to conquer nature serve inevita¬ bly only to deepen our subjection, reason dictates that we guide and limit our active striving for the improvement of our condition by an ultimate submission to the rule of nature. The rational response to the ills of the natural condition re¬ quires an assertion of partial sovereignty, with nature and humankind ruling and being ruled in turn. To be fully a self, a rational agent and bearer of rights, Locke teaches, is to accept this middling condition, submitting to the necessity of being governed and assuming responsibility for governing oneself. Yet to be established, however, are precisely how we are equipped to assume this responsibility, and what makes this subjection legitimate for beings whose natural condition Locke describes as a condition of “perfect Freedom.” These questions provide the subject matter of the next two chapters.

Notes 1. More elaborate discussions of the various historical possibilities subsumed under the concept of the state of nature appear in Martin Seliger, The Liberal Politics of John Locke (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968), 83-105; Richard Ashcraft, “Locke’s State of Nature: Historical Fact or Moral Fiction?” American Political Science Review 62 (1968): 898-915; Robert Goldwin, “Locke’s State of Nature in Political Society,” Western Political Quar¬ terly 29 (1976): 126-35; A. John Simmons, “Locke’s State of Nature,” Political Theory

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17 (1989): 449-70. 2. Dunn, Political Thought of John Locke, 103. 3. Arguing for the historical reality of the Lockean state or states of nature are Strauss, Natural Right and History, 230-31; Laslett, “Introduction,” 98-100; Seliger, The Liberal Politics of John Locke, 83-91; Goldwin, “Locke’s State of Nature”; Colman, Locke’s Moral Philosophy, 177; Pangle, Spirit of Modem Republicanism, 244-51. Others argue that Locke’s ambiguous usage of the concept signifies a dual intention on his part, that the Lockean state of nature is both a historical and a moral concept. Different versions of this reading appear in Ashcraft, “Locke’s State of Nature,” especially 898ff., and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, 97-122; Hans Aarslef, “The State of Nature and the Nature of Man in Locke,” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Yolton, 101-04; Waldron, “John Locke: Social Contract Versus Political Anthropology.” 4. Strauss, Natural Right, 165-66, 202-51; Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, especially 141-97; Rahe, “Locke’s Philosophical Partisanship,” 26-36, and Republics, 298315; Zuckert, Natural Rights, 187-288. 5. Neal Wood, The Politics of Locke’s Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 153-63; Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., Taming the Prince (New York: Free Press, 1989), 206-08; Arthur Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 49-50. 6. Zuckert provides the best discussion of the “strangeness” or novelty of this doctrine. Natural Rights, 221-46. 7. Consider in this respect Laslett’s attribution to Locke of a doctrine of “natural political virtue,” in “Introduction,” 109-17; cf. Ashcraft, Locke’s Two Treatises, 99-104, 166; Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy, 15-24. See also Peter Schouls, The Imposition of Method (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 195-99, and Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, 19-22. 8. Cf. Bacon’s desire to cleanse the human intellect of errors both acquired and natural, to assimilate it to “a fair sheet of paper with no writing on it” (“Great Instauration,” 22; New Organon Book 1, aph. 68). 9. Tarcov, Locke’s Education, 151; Wallin, “John Locke and the American Founding,” 155; Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 212-14. 10. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The First and Second Discourses, ed. Roger Masters (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), 116. 11. Scholars who assimilate Locke’s and Rousseau’s states of nature include C. E. Vaughan, Studies in the History of Political Philosophy, 134-39, 159-61, 202; Grant, John Locke’s Liberalism, 88; and Peter Laslett, “Introduction,” 182n. For a partial correction of this assimilation of Locke to Rousseau, see Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty, 6870. 12. Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, 102. 13. See, e.g., note L to the Second Discourse (213-20), where Rousseau (questionably) detects a lingering teleology in Locke’s account of the family in the state of nature. 14. The term belongs to Allan Bloom, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” in History of Political Philosophy, eds. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 535. 15. Strauss, Natural Right, 252-94, and What Is Political Philosophy?, 40-55; George Grant, English-Speaking Justice (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), 48-53.

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16. Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty, 152, draws this conclusion also from Locke’s comparison of mental to bodily pain, at STCE 112-14. Cf. Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, 107-09. 17. In the decisive respect, in other words, the character of the “ordinary” state of nature differs little from that of the extraordinary state of nature. According to the distinc¬ tion Locke suggests, in the “ordinary” state of nature each individual possesses a liberty roughly equal to that of all others “to judge of his Right, and according to the best of his Power, to maintain it,” whereas in (what Locke implies would be) the extraordinary state, the enforcement of individuals’ rights depends decisively upon the whims of “one, who being in the unrestrained state of Nature, is yet corrupted with Flattery, and armed with Power” (11.91; see also 11.46, 49, 102). See the brief discussion of Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 247-48, who appears to identify this distinction with Locke’s parallel (and also largely implicit) distinction between “perfect” and imperfect states of nature (11.14, 87, 94). As Pangle observes, Locke seems to intend both to indicate quietly the difficulty in conceiving of a strict separation between the natural and political condi¬ tions. See also Goldwin, “Locke’s State of Nature,” 135. 18. Goldwin, “Locke’s State of Nature,” 127; Grant, John Locke’s Liberalism, 71-72; Zuckert, Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, 236-37. 19. For Hobbes, the state of war “consisteth not in actuall fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary” (Leviathan, ch. 13, 186). 20. “Locke’s State of Nature: Historical Fact or Moral Fiction?” American Political Science Review 62 (1968): 898-915, especially 902-07; Locke’s Two Treatises of Govern¬ ment, 100-11, 197-211. Cf. Laslett, “Introduction,” 98-100, 11 Off.; Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy, 299. 21. Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 249. 22. Richard Cox, Locke on War and Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), 42-44, 100-01, 210-11. 23. Jose de Acosta, The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, trans. Edward Grimshaw [London: Hackluyt Society, 1604 (1st edition, Seville, 1590)], 72, 427; cf. 410. Cf. Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas, Part One, trans. Harold Liver¬ more (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), especially I.xii. For a more complete commentary on Locke’s use of these sources, see Cox, Locke on War and Peace, 94-105. 24. Leviathan, “A Review, and Conclusion,” 722. 25. I borrow the term “unprovidedness” from Michael Zuckert, “An Introduction to Locke’s First Treatise," Interpretation 8 (1979): 73-74. 26. Strauss, Natural Right, 224-26, 234-39; Goldwin, “John Locke,” 460-69; Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 158-71; Zuckert, Natural Rights, 262-66. 27. On the primacy of pain in Lockean psychology, see Strauss, Natural Right, 249-51; also Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), 314-31. 28. Locke introduces this desire abruptly in this context, seemingly to mark a transition from one stage of the prepolitical state of nature to another. But the significance of this transition is questionable. Strictly speaking, at 11.37 Locke refers to a condition before the desire beyond necessity had a specific effect, namely, the alteration of intrinsic or use values; he makes or implies no comment concerning whether such a desire were present in the beginning and simply otherwise focused. His procedure at II. 111 is similar. His reference there to a golden age before ambition and concupiscence had corrupted men s minds does not imply the existence of an age from which such passions were simply absent; it means at best that in an age of tribal, patriarchal monarchy, such passions were typically

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directed outward against other peoples rather than inward against one’s own. 29. Strauss, Natural Right, 235; Pierre Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 41. 30. The Prince, chap. 9: “For in every city these two diverse humors are found . . . that the people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the great desire to command and oppress the people” (ed. Mansfield, 39). 31. Robert Kraynak, “John Locke: From Absolutism to Toleration,” American Political Science Review 74, no. 1 (1980): 60-61; Wood, Politics of Locke’s Philosophy, 101-09. 32. Consider the distinction between the ambitious and the partisans formulated by David Epstein, The Political Theory of the Federalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 193-97. 33. In H. R. Fox Bourne, The Life of John Locke (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876), vol. 1, 178. 34. Despite the textual support that Locke at times provides, Cox errs in ascribing to Locke the opinion that there exists “a discernible natural hierarchy among the desires; the desire for self-preservation ... is primordial, universally operative, and the most powerful of all desires” {Locke on War and Peace, 88). Goldwin errs similarly: “The desire for preservation can be diverted, directed, or cajoled, but there is no way to diminish or eradicate its overwhelming power” (“John Locke,” in History of Political Philosophy, eds. Strauss and Cropsey, 484). Were this simply true, the law of nature would be far less “hid¬ den” than it is, and the need for Locke to write a book such as the Two Treatises far less urgent. 35. As even Rousseau seems ultimately to concede, Discourse on Inequality, 142ff. 36. See Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics 1155a22-28, 1167a26-30; Politics 1280b38-40, 1295b22-24. See also the discussion in Salkever, Finding the Mean, 242-44. 37. In the remark Locke quotes, Hooker declares it men’s “Duty, to Love others than themselves, for seeing those things which are equal, must needs all have one measure.” See Michael Zuckert, “Of Wary Physicians and Weary Readers: The Debates on Locke’s Way of Writing,” Independent Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978): 60. 38. On Lockean civility, see Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty, 137-41; Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 221-24. Contrast the ethic of communal service ascribed to Locke by John Marshall, Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility, 292-326. 39. Cf. Bacon: “the nature of man doth extremely covet ... to have somewhat in his understanding fixed and immovable, and as a rest and support for the mind” {Advancement of Learning, in Works III. 392, quoted in Lampert, Nietzsche and Modern Times, 136). 40. Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. MacPherson, chap. 17, 225-26. 41. This crucial but commonly neglected theme is emphasized by Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 179-81, and Uday Singh Mehta, The Anxiety of Freedom (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992), 80-118. 42. Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 172-83; Rahe, “Locke’s Philosophical Partisanship,” 33-34; Zuckert, Natural Rights, 187-215. 43. Contrast Spellman, Locke and the Problem of Depravity, 117ff. and passim, and Mehta, Anxiety of Freedom, 98-110, 125, 164, with Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republican¬ ism, 175-81, 189-90. 44. In response to humans’ capacity for neglect of and even cruelty toward their own offspring, Locke asks: “And is it the Priviledge of Man alone to act more contrary to Nature than the Wild and most Untamed part of the Creation?” (7TI.56). In this denial of the power of instinct, Locke once again suggests a line of reasoning pursued by Rousseau. See the Discourse on Inequality, 113-15, and the discussion in Tarcov, Locke’s Education

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for Liberty, 68-70. 45. “Locke on the Meaning of Political Language,” 184. 46. See Locke’s 1679 fragment on the errancy of human love: “We should therefore take care to choose fit and worthy objects of our love, lest like women that want children the proper objects of their affection we grow fond of litle dogs and munkys” (Lovelace Collection, MS Locke d.l, fol. 57). A nearly identical observation appears in Montaigne, Essays 1.4, who attributes it to Plutarch. 47. In King, Life of John Locke, 120. 48. See also Locke’s private remark to a French acquaintance: “les bestes sont plus sages que nous autres parceque comme dit une de nos poets burlesques . . . ‘But noe beast ever was so slight/For man, as for his god to fight/They have more wit alas! and know/Themselves and us better than soe’” (CJL #623, 2/9/1681 to Toinard; the verse is from Butler, Hudibras Li.775-778). 49. See Strauss, “Locke’s Doctrine of Natural Law,” in What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Essays, 213-14. 50. In King, Life of John Locke, 291-92. 51. On the dangers of the summum bonum, see Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republi¬ canism, 184ff. 52. This reading suggests the basis of an answer to Dunn’s important question concern¬ ing the normative relevance for modern peoples of the original or early human condition {Political Thought of John Locke, 106-07). The original condition can be normative for us, according to Locke, not because it is original, but rather because it reveals with particular clarity the essentially problematic character of the historically constant human condition and of the reflexive human responses to it. 53. For various readings of Locke as an apostle of the Enlightenment ideal of rational human autonomy, cf. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 248; Wallin, “Locke and the American Founding”; Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics, 113-217; Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, passim. 54. “Theses on Feuerbach,” 11, in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 158. 55. For examples of such an ethic of self-creation or rule of the imagination, see Karl Marx, “The German Ideology,” in McLellan, Karl Marx: Selected Writings, 169, and Richard Rorty’s descriptions of “ironism” in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (passim). Richard Sherlock and Roger Barrus raise an objection similar to my own against such an ethic, in “The Problem of Religion in Liberalism,” 286.

.

,

.

Chapter Five

Nature and the Rational Pursuit of Happiness Locke’s account of the state of nature implies that the great historical task of humankind is to cultivate and to preserve our capacity for personhood or moral agency—to become, to the greatest degree that our natures permit, rational, responsible adults. For Locke, to be fully or adequately a person does not mean to achieve a status of radical autonomy, transcending all determination by the empirical, natural world. Rather, it means to be capable of the rational pursuit of happiness. In Locke’s understanding, human psychology simply does not admit of any strict separation between reasons and motives: as “Good and Evil, Reward and Punishment, are the only Motives to a rational Creature,” absent “apercep¬ tion of Delight... we should have no reason to prefer one Thought or Action, to another” (STCE 54; ECHU2.7.3, emphasis partly supplied). Morality is simply “the rule of mans actions for the atteining happynesse.”1 Thus in the Second Treatise, notwithstanding Locke’s declaration that preservation is “the great and chief end” of political society, preservation stands ultimately as a particularly important means to happiness. “Law, in its true Notion, is . . . the direction of a free and intelligent Agent to his proper Interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general Good of those under that Law. Could they be happier without it, the Law, as an useless thing, would of it self vanish.” So far as “no rational Creature can be supposed to change his condition with an intention to be worse,” justice must accord with or advance the pursuit of happiness if it is to be reason¬ able, or choiceworthy for a rational being (7TII.124, 57, 131).2

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Moreover, as Locke declines to effect a strict separation between the normative and the empirical or the right and the good, so he declines, somewhat more surprisingly, to conceive of the right as unambiguously prior to the good. In some significant respects, Locke’s grounding of fundamental rights in the rational agent’s pursuit of happiness is indeed a not-too-distant ancestor of the attempt by John Rawls and other present-day liberal theorists to locate the basis of such rights in the fact or the presumption of moral personhood, comprising a “sense of justice” and the ability to form a rational “life-plan.”3 For Rawls, however, the requirement that justice and happiness be mutually compatible does not entail an attempt to supply a truly substantive (as distinct from a formal) account of human happiness.4 Confident that some suitable conception of happiness will follow from the prior establishment of the self and its rights, Rawls feels free to adopt an instrumentalist conception of reason and a posture of neutrality with respect to diverse conceptions of happiness.5 By contrast, Locke affirms that “the highest perfection of intellectual nature,” the activity that qualifies us and dignifies us as moral persons, is “a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness” (2.21.51; emphasis supplied). Locke designs his doctrine of justice not to accom¬ modate the pursuit of happiness however understood, but instead to support the pursuit of a still somewhat pluralistic but more substantively determinate, ratio¬ nally defensible understanding of true and solid happiness. Notwithstanding his own forceful critique of the teleological principle and his liberal reticence with respect to pronouncements about the human good, Locke holds in the final analy¬ sis that a broadened, liberalized conception of the good is indeed prior to the right. The purpose of this chapter is to subject this claim to critical scrutiny. I devote particular attention to a line of objection tracing once again to Rousseau, who, dissatisfied with what he regards as the incompleteness or evasiveness of Locke’s (or the Lockean) treatment of the idea of happiness, has directed much subsequent critical energy toward the exploration of various non-Lockean, liberal or nonlib¬ eral strategies for supplying this crucial defect. While paying due respect to the seriousness and power of such arguments, I maintain nonetheless that they rest upon a significant underestimation of the breadth and depth of Locke’s vision. The decisive point is that Locke holds a more complex, more affirmative view of the natural human condition than that elaborated in the preceding chapter. However powerfully aversive the primordial experience of penury or unprovidedness, Locke holds that in the decisive respects we are in fact well provided by nature for the rational pursuit of happiness. Let us consider further the equipment with which nature provides us for the pursuit of happiness, and the specific, substantive nature of human happiness as Locke conceives of it. Locke’s account of our equipment for moral agency and the rational pursuit of happiness begins with his account of the human power of willing.

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The Determination and Freedom of the Will “Person,” Locke maintains, is “a forensick Term appropriating Actions and their Merit” (ECHU 2.27.26). A person is a being with a capacity to own actions, or, more simply stated, to act. The power of agency is a necessary condition of freedom (2.21.19). In mm, the power of willing is essential to agency. By ordi¬ nary reflection, we find in ourselves “a Power to begin or forbear, continue or end several actions of our minds, and motions of our Bodies, barely by a thought or preference of the mind ordering, or as it were commanding the doing or not doing ... a particular action” (2.21.5, 7, and passim). This power of volition or willing is the power of self-ordering or self-commanding. By establishing the mind’s “Dominion . . . over any part of the Man” (2.21.15), it enables us to appropriate our internal and external motions, which would otherwise be mere unconscious or unfree behavior, as our own productions and thus our own actions. Locke’s definition implies, however, that the power of willing is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition of the freedom of agents. We are free as agents so far as the alternatives of performance and forbearance of a given action lie equally in our power, so that our volition to perform or forbear occurs in the context of a genuine choice (2.21.8, 27). In Locke’s example, a man falling through the air has volition but not freedom: he wills not to fall, but his volition is irrelevant to his performing or forbearing, that is, his continuing or ceasing to fall. On the same principle, a man who wills to remain with desirable company in a locked room is also unfree, if less obviously so, in that his remaining cannot be said to depend simply upon his will to remain, but is instead necessitated by an external impedi¬ ment to his leaving (2.21.9, 10, 50). Locke’s account diverges importantly from that of Hobbes, for whom the circumstances surrounding the determination of the will or the availability of genuine alternatives is irrelevant to the question of freedom. For Hobbes, “A FREE-MAN, is he, that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to doe what he has a will to.”6 Locke’s stricter, more exacting definition of freedom, reflecting his conception of freedom as an unalien¬ able right, is integral to his rejection of Hobbesian absolutism in particular, with its strange effacement of the distinction between government based on voluntary consent and government based upon mere submission to superior force. But this insistence upon an element of contingency or indeterminacy in the availability of alternative courses of action brings to light a potential difficulty, of which Locke is well aware, for Locke’s understanding of the liberty of persons. Applying this account of free action to the action of volition itself, “the inquisitive Mind of Man” might question whether we can say properly that someone is free “if he be not as free to will, as he is to act, what he wills” (2.21.22). Recall Locke’s observation that “Morality and Mechanism ... are not very easy to be reconciled, or made consistent”: it is difficult to see how we could be true agents, possessing active power, if the will itself were merely a passive power, capable only of receiving, not producing change (1.3.14; 2.21.2). Yet it is equally ques-

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tionable whether we could be true agents if the will were a strictly active power, undetermined by any prior cause. For if we were to conceive of the freedom of the will as a condition of pure indeterminacy, then we would be forced to affirm the absurdity that human agency rests upon the sand of sheer arbitrariness—“as great an imperfection,” Locke maintains, “as the want of Indifferency to act, or not to act, till determined by the Will, would be an imperfection on the other side” (2.21.48). Andrzej Rapaczynski nicely summarizes the difficulty: “If the agent’s choice of reasons is ultimately determined, then he cannot be responsible for his actions. If, on the other hand, his choice is not determined, then it is unmotivated and arbitrary. If this is the case, however, responsibility will not make much sense either, for the agent is not ‘rational.’”7 To make sense of our experience, Locke must somehow locate a stable ground of freedom, lying between the extremes of fatalism and arbitrariness that correspond to the alternative conceptions of the will as a purely passive or as a purely active power. Locke acknowledges these potential difficulties and attempts to resolve them in the Essay's crucial chapter “Of Power.” After disposing of the semantic confu¬ sions and a few of the more trivial questions that arise from an excessively literal construction of the term “free will” (2.21.6, 14-25), he considers first the ques¬ tion of the determination of the will. Fundamentally, Locke holds that “that which immediately determines the Will... is the uneasiness of desire, fixed on some absent good” (2.21.33). Several ideas require brief explication. Like Hobbes, and in keeping with his reduction of the complex to the simple, Locke defines the good in clearly hedonistic terms: “what has an aptness to produce Pleasure in us, is that we call Good, and what is apt to produce Pain in us, we call Evil, for no other reason, but for its aptness to produce Pleasure and Pain in us” (2.21.42; also 2.20.1-3).8 “Uneasiness” refers simply to pain; it includes “All pain of the body of what sort soever, and disquiet of the mind. ” Uneasiness is inseparable from desire, as desire is “nothing but an uneasiness in the want of an absent good.” Further, Locke distinguishes between an essentially negative or indefinite desire for ease from pain and an essentially positive or clearly directed desire for a particular absent good (2.21.31). It is the latter form, the desire for an absent or prospective good, that leads to the heart of his account of voluntary action. The need to supply a more adequate explanation of our desires for absent goods led Locke, according to his own testimony, to reconsider his understanding of the determination of the will between the publication of the first and second editions of the Essay. In the first edition, he confesses, he took for granted the soundness of the opinion that “seems so establish’d and settled a maxim by the general consent of all Mankind, That good, the greater good, determines the will” (2.21.35).9 In part, Locke’s reconsideration arises out of a need to explain the common fact of volitional error. On the principle that the greater apparent good determines the will, we are unable to explain the fact that we often stray volun¬ tarily from our own understanding of what is good for us—that we commonly acknowledge the goodness and real possibility of a joyful afterlife or a prosperous

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earthly future, for instance, yet choose not to order our lives in the pursuit of such goods. [L]et a Drunkard see, that his Health decays, his Estate wastes; Discredit and Diseases, and the want of all things, even of his beloved Drink, attends him in the course he follows: yet the returns of uneasiness to miss his Companions; the habitual thirst after his Cups, at the usual time, drives him to the Tavern, though he has in his view the loss of health and plenty, and perhaps of the joys of another life: the least of which is no inconsiderable good, but such as he confesses, is far greater, than the tickling of his palate with a glass of Wine, or the idle chat of a soaking Club. (2.21.35; also 38, 45)

In this respect, Yolton is correct in observing that the revised view constitutes a correction of the first edition’s “intellectualist position on motives.”10 But Locke’s revision carries a deeper significance, in bringing his account of willing in line with the general antiteleological thrust of the Essay and indeed of his philosophy as a whole.11 The sense of uneasiness must be the primary or immedi¬ ate determinant of the will, on the principle that it is “against the nature of things, that what is absent should operate, where it is not” (2.21.37). Although we may experience a kind of pleasure as we imagine ourselves enjoying an absent good, we are moved to attempt to make an absent or prospective good actually present to us, only if we experience in its absence a sense of privation or uneasiness. And as Locke’s example as well as our everyday experience shows, it is far from automatic that the greatest goods or even the greatest perceived goods raise in us desires or uneasinesses proportionate to their actual or perceived goodness. The significance of Locke’s revision is to call attention not only to the imperfect power of the understanding to move the will but also, more profoundly, to the incom¬ pleteness of nature’s provision for human well-being. Once again, just as nature in its immanent operations supplies no precise and universally compelling ideas of the species of beings and thus leaves itself imperfectly intelligible to the human understanding, so nature supplies no universally effective telos “for the sake of which” we live, no good or goods that universally or generally compel human assent and give direction to human striving. Not all, not even the highest absent acknowledged good suffices to raise in us a motivating sense of uneasiness, but only “so much of it, as is consider’d, and taken to make a necessary part of [our] happiness” (2.21.43; also 59). It is “happiness and that alone” that stirs us (2.21.41). The idea of happiness operates as a kind of regulatory principle, determining which prospective goods do and which do not raise motivating desires in us.12 Initially, Locke describes happiness, like good and bad or evil, in simple hedonistic terms. In its full extent it is “the utmost Pleasure we are capable of,” while in its lowest degree it is “so much ease from all Pain, and so much present Pleasure, as without which one cannot be content” (2.21.42). But the simplicity of this initial description is misleading, and Locke soon corrects it. The idea of happiness is a mixed mode, a complex idea, in Locke’s scheme, and as such is not merely a passive perception, but is rather the product, to a considerable degree, of an act of mental construction. In the

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determination of the will, as in the formation of species ideas, an element of human construction or conventionalism must fill the space that nature leaves. The central questions therefore concern the framing of our conceptions of happiness. By virtue of what mental faculties or powers do we construct these conceptions? How, if at all, according to Locke, can we form our ideas of happiness rationally, or in accordance with a reasoned judgment of what is truly good for us and harmful to us? In keeping with his account of the mental sloth and negligence to which we are prone in our natural state, Locke corrects in the Essay the first edition’s implicit assimilation of human willing to that of “those superior Beings above us” by calling attention to the commonly subrational construction of the ideas of happi¬ ness that set our wills in motion. Commonly, the uneasinesses from which we seek relief proceed from some combination of more-or-less unreflectively acquired habits and opinions, and natural passions or aversions, such as bodily pain, lust, or revenge (2.21.38-39). What deserves greater emphasis, however, is that in his revised account Locke does not assert the necessarily or decisively subrational character of human willing. He does not contradict, with respect to the most important of our purposes, the pursuit of happiness, the Essay’s fundamental teaching that “the Candle, that is set up in us, shines bright enough for all our Purposes” (1.1.5). To the contrary, as Colman observes, Locke’s revision consti¬ tutes a clarification rather than a rejection of the view “that properly free actions are those which are grounded in rational decisions.”13 In fact, Locke views the corrected account as instrumental to his exhortation to us to strive to become more rational with respect to our ideas of happiness. In chapter three, we saw how Locke’s emphasis on the inadequacy of our substance-species ideas and on the element of conventionalism involved in their formation is intended as a spur to industry—-not to demonstrate the futility of, but instead to reinvigorate, historicalscientific inquiry. Here we shall see, similarly, how his denial of the motivational efficacy of “bare contemplation” or “unactive speculation” (2.21.34, 37), along with his broader acknowledgment of the imperfectly rational, commonly subra¬ tional determination of the will, is intended to prepare an exhortation to us to exercise more rational industry, to deliberate more actively and responsibly, in the conception and pursuit of happiness. In the remainder of the chapter “Of Power” and elsewhere in the Essay, Locke is concerned to show that the mental sloth and errancy to which we are naturally prone are not necessary, and indeed are morally blameworthy. Human beings are by nature well equipped for the rational pursuit of happiness, by virtue of our capacity to develop several mental powers in particular. The “first . . . and great use of Liberty,” according to Locke, “is to hinder blind Precipitancy” (2.21.67). We are able to rise above the brutish impulsiveness characteristic of the original human beings, so far as we are capable of a distanced reflection upon our present desires. To account for this capacity, Locke again revises the Essay, explaining in the second and subsequent editions the mind’s power “to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires.” By enabling us to examine with “caution,

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deliberation, and wariness” the alternative courses of action available to us, this suspensory capacity supplies an indispensable condition of responsible agency or self-ownership. It constitutes “the hinge on which turns the liberty of intellectual Beings” (2.21.47, 52, 56, 67). The introduction of this power constitutes a refine¬ ment of Locke’s earlier, more behavioral definition of liberty as the power only to do or forbear, which contained no reference to the deeper question whether we are free also to determine our own volitional commands. In both Locke’s day and our own, however, critics have doubted that the introduction of the suspensory power adds anything of significance to Locke’s account of volitional freedom, reasoning that if the act of suspension itself occurs in response to a pressing uneasiness, then it remains unclear how Locke’s account differs, at bottom, from the explicitly mechanistic account of Hobbes.14 This critical questioning serves usefully to focus attention on the origin or basis of the desire to deliberate, or to suspend the execution of our (other) pressing desires. Those who hold such doubts as objections should bear in mind Locke’s insis¬ tence that freedom proper rests not upon simple indeterminacy, but instead upon reason. Locke’s attempt to distinguish his own from Hobbes’s account of voli¬ tional freedom depends upon a distinction of rationally determined from subrationally determined willing, not of determined from undetermined willing. Al¬ though it implies the dependence of the act of deliberating upon a prior sense of uneasiness, Locke’s account does not reduce reason to the status of a mere servant of the passions—a mere scout and spy, in Hobbes’s formulation, “to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.”15 Rather, Locke’s account of liberty depends upon the operation of a “master passion,” as Peter Schouls calls it,16 a desire for rational deliberation that holds a status of priority relative to other desires. Now because morally qualifying human rationality is not among nature’s spontaneous productions, according to Locke, human liberty depends upon our capacity to cultivate it. As Nathan Tarcov has carefully shown, Locke makes the cultivation of such rationality in children the major theme of Some Thoughts Concerning Education. I shall return later in this chapter to consider how Locke establishes in the Essay the psychological conditions upon which this pedagogy depends. At present, however, to do justice to Locke’s account of the role of the under¬ standing in determining volition, it is necessary to explore the basis of the “due considering” that the suspensory power makes possible, in a further, more pro¬ foundly significant mental power. Once again, it is an error, according to Locke, to conceive of human happiness in purely subjective terms. He is able to maintain that, among all mortal beings, human (or rational-corporeal) beings are uniquely capable of happiness (2.20.5; 2.27.17, 26) only on the basis of an understanding of happiness as more than the mere perception of pleasure and pain. Only in a narrow, minimalist sense—only in reference to “present Happiness”—does Locke hold that “who is content is happy” (2.21.59). Given that “the present moment [is] not. . . our eternity” and “our voluntary Actions carry not all the Happiness and Misery, that depend on them, along with them in their present performance; but

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are the precedent causes of Good and Evil,” it follows that there must be such a thing as a thoughtless or even irrational contentment, as well as a present painful¬ ness that is yet rationally choiceworthy in contributing to a lasting happiness (2.21.39, 59, 68). As it proceeds from a consideration of prospective as well as present pleasures and pains, a fully rational conception of happiness represents an ordering of priorities that extends properly over the course of one’s entire life, if not also beyond it (2.21.58-63, 70). Herein lies the importance of Locke’s controversial claim that it is the mental power of abstraction, “the having of general Ideas . . . which puts a perfect distinction betwixt Man and Brutes. . . . ’tis that proper difference wherein they are wholly separated, and which at last widens to so vast a difference” (2.11.10ll).17 By virtue of an adequately developed power of abstraction, we are able to form general ideas not only of external things but also, more importantly, of our selves. By virtue of this power we are able, as it were, to assemble or unify ourselves, abstracting from a succession of instant, momentary experiences an idea of the self as the subject of those experiences, the seat of passion, action, and concernment, with an identity continuing over time (2.27.17ff.).18 As we are able to conceive of our own lives as integrated wholes capable of being more or less well lived, we can form more deliberately and rationally the ideas of happiness in reference to which we may suspend the execution of or reshape our particular, momentary desires. This power imaginatively to transcend the present is potentially a very farreaching power, involving more than a power to project oneself into the future or to revisit what is past in one’s own life. As we saw in chapters one and two, historicist commentators err in unhistorically ascribing to Locke the opinion that human thought is necessarily imprisoned within a more-or-less narrowly definable historical context.19 In stressing the dangers inherent in uncritical assent to the received opinions of our various circles of association (1.4.22; 4.12.4; 4.15.6; 4.20.17; also CU 3, 41), Locke suggests a potentially broad human power to reflect critically upon one’s formative influences. At least in the deliberations of the most rational selves, it lies within the power of the human understanding to look “abroad beyond the Smoak of [one’s] own Chimneys” (1.3.2) to achieve a distanced reflection upon and thus some measure of liberty from our own histori¬ cal present and even our cultural inheritance. In Locke’s view, our capacity to appropriate to our imagination the experiences of others in other times and places, to consider them as potentially our own, supplies an essential condition of our capacity to own actions by ensuring that they proceed from authentic choices. In sum, human willing is nonarbitrary so far as it is determined by the uneasi¬ ness that we feel in the pursuit of happiness, and it is free so far as we are able deliberately to construct and reconstruct our regulating ideas of happiness. Be¬ neath our claim to the possession of rights, to rightful subjection to the law of reason, lies our power of agency—our power deliberately and reflectively to construct the ideas of happiness whereby we govern ourselves, and thereby to claim ownership of our actions and of our selves. By the light of this reasoning,

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it appears that our claims to rights signify claims of what is due to beings consti¬ tuted by an indefeasible desire for happiness and the capacity for law, or for the rational self-restraint required for us to respect others’ claims to rights. As thus far elaborated, however, the argument is incomplete: to establish that we have the power to act in a lawful manner, consistent with a respect for others’ liberty to act lawfully, is not yet to establish that lawfulness thus understood is truly moral, according to Locke’s definition, or ultimately conducive to or consistent with true human happiness. In the final analysis, the soundness of Locke’s argument for egalitarian rights grounded in common moral rationality depends upon his answer to the further, deeper question of what, specifically, our happiness is. To this difficult question we mm now.

The Problem of Human Happiness On the Desire for Eternal Happiness Let us begin with the most familiar of Locke’s suggestions concerning the nature of human happiness. To place our pursuit of happiness in the proper per¬ spective, Locke reminds readers in various ways of the imperfections of the happiness available to mortals. “[I]ndeed in this life there are not many, whose happiness reaches so far, as to afford them a constant train of moderate mean pleasures, without any mixture of uneasiness” (2.21.44). Provided that we inter¬ pret it properly, our recognition of the mixed, imperfect character of earthly happiness may work to our benefit, pointing us toward a higher, fuller happiness: “we may find another reason why God hath scattered up and down several degrees of Pleasure and Pain, in all the things that environ and affect us . . . that we finding imperfection, dissatisfaction, and want of complete happiness, in all the Enjoyments which the Creatures can afford us, might be led to seek it in the enjoyment of him, with whom there is fullness of joy” (2.7.5). At the close of his discussion of the pursuit of happiness in the chapter “Of Power,” Locke offers a similar suggestion as to the content of the “true and solid happiness” that we should seek: “he that will not be so far a rational Creature, as to reflect seriously upon infinite Happiness and Misery, must needs condemn himself, as not making that use of his Understanding he should. The Rewards and Punishments of another Life, which the Almighty has established ... are of weight enough to determine the Choice, against whatever Pleasure or Pain this Life can shew” (2.21.70). Thus the imperfections of a purely natural good lead us to a higher good, which is also our moral good. Not only is happiness compatible with morality, according to this suggestion, but our highest and only true happiness requires it. Whereas natural “Good and Evil ... are nothing but Pleasure or Pain,” Locke declares, “Morally Good and Evil... is [sic] only the Conformity or Disagree¬ ment of our voluntary Actions to some Law, whereby Good or Evil is drawn on us, from the Will and Power of the Law-maker.” And as the “Divine Law,

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whereby I mean, that Law which God has set to the actions of Men,” represents “the only true touchstone of moral Rectitude” (2.28.5, 8; cf. 1.3.6),20 so it directs us toward “our greatest interest,” namely, “the Condition of our eternal Estate” (4.12.11). The true science of happiness as well as of morality, therefore, is the science of theology, “incomparably above all the others” (CU 23; also LCT, 47, Works 1823, 6.165). This might seem to explain the vanity of the inquiries of “the Philosophers of old” concerning the “Summum bonum” (2.21.55). For if the science of theology, as Locke repeatedly affirms, points to the truth of Christian¬ ity, then “old” or pre-Christian philosophers inquired after a truth that had not yet been clearly revealed (RC 241-45). As some contemporary commentators have observed, to identify a revelationbased or even theocentric argument as the deep or primary basis of Locke’s political thought is, for better or worse, to place that political thought outside the universe of present-day liberal discourse.21 What has been less consistently under¬ stood, however, is that it is also an interpretive error. It is not an error, of course, to ascribe to Locke the opinion that a hopefulness concerning the afterlife is an essential component of many rational persons’ conceptions of happiness. To this extent many commentators are correct in ascribing substantial interpretive impor¬ tance to Locke’s theological, “workmanship” argument. Nonetheless, Locke appeals to his readers, with their various intellectual “palates” (ECHU, “Epistle to the Reader,” 8), at several levels of rationality, and all of these appeals point toward a significantly modified understanding of the relation between natural and moral good and evil. As we saw in chapter two, those who wish to follow the Lockean route to otherworldly reward will find that, for much of the journey at least, they must travel in the company of those intent only on the deliberate, reflective pursuit of secular happiness. Let us briefly review this argument and consider its deeper significance. Locke’s teaching concerning the moral significance of the fact of mortality and the hope for a heavenly afterlife is complex and difficult. As we saw in the pre¬ ceding chapter, Locke observes that the awareness of mortality can be the source of a profoundly unsettling anxiety, and therewith of much irrational belief and action. Viewed in this light, there appears a certain wisdom or beneficence in the regulation of our uneasinesses by our own, self-constructed ideas of happiness rather than by the greatest acknowledged good, in that the element of human construction allows us to avoid a fixation on the prospect of heavenly afterlife and the constant and infinite misery that such a fixation would bring. This observation does not move Locke, of course, to recommend to his readers an attitude of willed inattention to the prospect of mortality or of an afterlife. The very imperfection of the human condition, affording us no pure, unmixed pleasure or happiness, makes some awareness of and reflection on this prospect unavoidable for even a minimally rational person (ECHU 2.7.5; 2.21.46; 4.20.3, 6). Moreover, Locke suggests that the more common result of the exercise of our power to “exclude the joys of Heaven” from our effective conceptions of happiness is not to enhance our rationality, but rather to facilitate an alternative, secular form of escapism, as

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exemplified in the brutish sensualism of the drunkard who returns daily to his tavern, fully cognizant of the costs to his health, wealth, and possible spiritual fate (2.21.44, 35). Still, if it is to serve the endowment of virtue (RC 245) or to enhance our mental stability in the pursuit of happiness, the hope for an afterlife must be placed on a rational footing. The key to this endeavor is to understand, once again, that “the justice and goodness of the great and infinite God” constitutes the foundation of all (reason¬ able) religion (RC 1). A good and just God must make himself and his law knowable to his rational creatures, and must allow our minds to rest in the expectation that we will be rewarded for conformity to the divine law. It is reasonable to assent to the Christian revelation, Locke suggests, so far as the gospel teaches that Jesus will pass judgment on us according to our deeds, thus rendering virtue “visibly the most enriching purchase, and by much the best bargain” (RC 252, 245; also 6, 222, 227). To the same effect, although his purported demonstration of God’s existence remains silent on the question of heavenly reward, Locke offers to those among the Essay's readers who are more cautious with respect to claims of positive revelation, an argument closely resembling Pascal’s wager:22 even “when the eternal State is considered but in its bare possibility, which no Body can make any doubt of,” due consideration of otherworldly rewards and punishments should suffice to determine our choices in favor of virtuous action (2.21.70; emphasis supplied). With respect to the specific dictates of morality or virtue, the premise of God’s necessary goodness and justice (and, we may add, wisdom) is again suggestive. As we saw in chapter two, it is inconceivable to Locke that a wise, just, and good God could give humankind the distinctive faculty of reason, “the most excellent Part of his Workmanship,” yet promulgate a law that contravened reason’s pre¬ cepts (4.18.5; also 2.1.15; 4.17.24; cf. 7TI.86). And it is likewise inconceivable that such a God could create humankind with a constant, irresistible desire for happiness, yet promulgate a law whose obedience would produce human unhap¬ piness (ECHU 1.3.3; RC 245). To stimulate our concern for salvation, a good, just, and wise God might well endow us with a strong desire for happiness while rendering perfect mundane happiness unattainable. But such a God would not command us to violate our nature or creaturely endowment by commanding us simply to renounce the pursuit of mundane happiness. The law of repentance or “works” that God gives us is none other than “the law of reason, or, as it is called, of nature” (RC 14)—the moral rules that derive from a sound understand¬ ing of human nature. From this it follows, as we shall see more fully in the following chapter, that God not only allows but indeed intends us to use our faculties to better our mundane condition, in the course of seeking our ultimate reward (see TT 1.47, 11.32). To the question how we should actually go about pursuing eternal happiness, Locke’s implicit response is: pursue secular happiness rationally. Locke’s alternative, more explicitly rationalist arguments lead to the same conclusion. Granted, in the argument resembling Pascal’s wager, Locke asserts

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that a recognition of the bare possibility of an afterlife should determine a rational person to choose a virtuous life, even if “the vertuous Life here had nothing but Pain, and the vicious continual pleasure” (2.21.70). It seems much less clear than Locke openly acknowledges, however, that the deeply uncertain prospect of even an infinitely greater, eternal happiness must convince a rational person to forgo a lesser, but much more predictably achievable secular happiness. It is certainly the case that the argument gains power as the sacrifice required by a virtuous life diminishes. Unquestionably mindful of this consideration, Locke proceeds imme¬ diately to observe that “wicked Men ... all things rightly considered, have . . . even the worse part here.” As it turns out, “the portion of the righteous,” on a reasonable understanding of righteousness, is not at all “scanty” even in this world. Only on this premise, that virtue promotes secular happiness, can Locke say that “the sober Man” truly “ventures nothing” in wagering on the possibility of eternal happiness (2.21.70; contrast RC 245.) Locke makes the implication still clearer, albeit in an even more carefully and subtly formulated argument, by linking the argument resembling Pascal’s wager to an appeal to a still more austerely rational audience. Purporting to explain the diversity of human conceptions of happiness, he ventures an observation full of significance for the orientation toward an otherworldly happiness: If therefore Men in this Life only have hope; if in this Life they can only enjoy, ’tis not strange, nor unreasonable, that they should seek their Happiness by avoiding all things, that disease them here, and by pursuing all that delight them; wherein it will be no wonder to find variety and difference. For if there be no Prospect beyond the Grave, the inference is certainly right, Let us eat and drink, let us enjoy what we delight in, for to morrow we shall die. (2.21.55)

It may appear upon first reading that Locke intends here to reaffirm the tradi¬ tional Biblical view of hedonistic indulgence, rejecting the premise that “there be no Prospect beyond the Grave” and therewith the inference that we should “eat and drink,” or attend to our earthly happiness.23 It is interesting to note, however, that whereas Paul responds to the invitation to eat and drink with the admonition that “evil communications corrupt good manners” (I Corinthians 15:32-33; also Isaiah 22:12-14), Locke observes merely that the conclusion is not unreasonable and even “certainly right,” if the premise is sound. With respect to the soundness of the premise itself, Locke makes no explicit comment. But in the passage under consideration, the counsel to pursue secular happiness proceeds from two appar¬ ently divergent premises: not only from the bleakly conclusive assertion that we have “no Prospect beyond the Grave” but also from the seemingly more moderate, agnostic acknowledgment that “Men in this Life only have hope.” Now, the latter premise Locke straightforwardly affirms. His insistence that knowledge of an afterlife is simply beyond the reach of human reason (4.17.23; 4.18.7) amounts to an acknowledgment that in fact, in this life, we do have only hope. If Locke holds the implications of these two premises to be the same, then it follows that, according to Locke himself, we really are “like a Company of poor Insects,”

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whose happiness is simply to enjoy what delights us “for a season,” at the close of which we must “cease to be, and exist no more for ever” (2.21.55).24 As we pursue Locke’s various lines of moral reasoning, we find that they thus converge. Locke counsels the pious, the moderate skeptics or questioners, and the most austerely rational that whether they cling to a hope for a heavenly reward or not, the “true and solid” happiness to which they must primarily devote them¬ selves is the happiness of this life. This conclusion does not contradict the stated lesson of Locke’s version of Pascal’s wager, just as it does not represent the collapse of the distinction between natural and moral good and evil. Rather, by quietly but insistently secularizing the rational pursuit of happiness, Locke seeks both to imitate and to advance the Christian “endowment” of virtue. There is a carefully crafted ambiguity in his phrasing, in the declaration that morality “carries in it”—even if it is not naturally ordered toward, or carries as well other interests than—“our greatest interest, i.e. the Condition of our Eternal Estate” (4.12.11). Under scrutiny, the moral good that a good and just God does or would approve for us turns out to be effectively indistinguishable from our true, wellconsidered natural good. It is that portion of the natural good that is recommended by our industrious, deliberate, foresighted reflection on what produces genuine, lasting pleasure in this life.25 Having thus arrived at the end of the path of reason¬ ing indicated by Locke’s distinction between natural and moral good and evil, however, we find that we have returned almost to the original point of departure, now with a somewhat refined but still quite indefinite idea of where to search. What, specifically, is the true and solid, secular happiness that a rational person pursues, according to Locke, and how does it attach us to the cause of justice or rational self-government?

The Problem of Secular Relativism To address the question of secular happiness is to confront the problem of Lockean relativism. In keeping with his critique of premodem, teleological doctrines of natural kinds and his observation of the tremendous moral diversity among the peoples of the world, Locke at times appears simply to deny that there is any definite answer to the question of human happiness. Once again, Locke chides “the Philosophers of old” for vainly inquiring whether Summum bonum consisted in Riches, or bodily Delights, or Virtue, or Con¬ templation: And they might have as reasonably disputed, whether the best Relish were to be found in Apples, Plumbs, or Nuts; and have divided themselves into Sects upon it. For as pleasant Tastes depend not on the things themselves, but their agreeableness to this or that particular Palate, wherein there is great variety: So the greatest Happi¬ ness consists, in the having those things, which produce the greatest Pleasure; and in the absence of those, which cause any disturbance, any pain. Now these, to different Men, are very different things. (2.21.55)

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Perhaps out of an awareness that the principle of the absolute diversity or relativity of happiness must entail the relativity, and thus the dissolution, also of the rules of morality and justice, Locke refrains from asserting an absolute relativ¬ ism. Instead he describes the greatest happiness in somewhat curious terms as the “having” of those things that “produce” the greatest pleasures—in terms of the possession of the means to happiness or great pleasure (see 2.20.7). He seems, in other words, to propose an ethical doctrine in which the substance of happiness as the end of human action is relative, but the means to happiness are nonrelative. One may wonder, however, whether this line of reasoning can withstand the serious objections that it has provoked. For thoughtful commentators of various persuasions have found it difficult to see how such a conception of happiness is capable of serving the cause either of human happiness or of justice. In the view of some critics, Locke’s thought suffers from a preoccupation with means and powers to the exclusion of genuine ends that derives from and closely resembles the “perpetuall and restlesse” Hobbesian striving for “Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death.”26 In its apparently soulless, bloodlessly calculating treatments of virtually all extra-personal devotions—of the loves of God, country, friends, family, and, for a few, reasoning itself—as in his doctrine of “Increase,” of endless laboring in the production of limitless material wealth and scientific knowledge, Locke’s thought appears to effect an abstraction from eros that reflects a much more genuine hostility to eros than that contrived by Socrates in Plato’s Republic.21 The “Lockean Locke,” as Tarcov has dubbed this general characterization,28 offers us security along with some measure of prosper¬ ity and respectability, or personal power—but all to what end? So far as it would busy us in the securing of means, diverting us from potentially intoxicating, but also potentially ennobling or redeeming ends, the Lockean pursuit of happiness would seem to reduce to the absurd buzzing about of mere flies of a summer, or to a ceaseless, laborious, painstaking preparation for a rest that we may never truly enjoy. This is the ethic that Dunn and Strauss characterize, respectively, as a “boundless repression” and a “joyless quest for joy.”29 In this reading, Lockean liberalism represents precisely the pallid, self-contradictory doctrine of alienation that provoked the rebellion of Rousseau30 and that continues to inspire romantic and other attempts to replace the older liberalism with allegedly more humane, fulfilling doctrines of collectivist communitarianism or individual self-expression. And once again, beneath the objection levelled by his most philosophically pene¬ trating critics lies the charge that Locke fails to come fully to terms with the moral implications of his critique of the teleological principle. Furthermore, as it cannot make us happy, so, according to a closely related objection, the Lockean ethic cannot make us just. The basis of this aspect of the difficulty lies in the necessitarian character of Locke’s conceptions of nature and justice. Locke’s insistence on the diversity of ideas of human happiness and the naturalness of moral dissensus is of a piece with his more fundamental account of the natural uncertainty of our definitions of the names of substances and species. Accordingly, his denial of a moral consensus gentium, while emphatic, is not

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total. Alongside his vigorous denials of the precise adequacy of the definitions that nature provides us, whether of species in general or of moral concepts and laws, Locke more quietly affirms, once again, that nature contributes significantly in furnishing the basic “materials” of consensus. The basis of moral consensus appears to lie in our common subjection to natural necessity in one form or an¬ other. Qualifying one of his more extreme statements of the prevalence of moral dissensus, Locke indicates the general character of the principles upon which human societies have achieved a reasonable consensus: “there is scarce that Principle of Morality to be named . . . which is not, somewhere or other, slighted and condemned by the general Fashion of whole Societies of Men,” he observes, “those only excepted, that are absolutely necessary to hold Society together. ” As “Justice and Truth are the common ties of Society . . . even Outlaws and Robbers, who break with all the World besides, must keep Faith and Rules of Equity amongst themselves” (ECHU 1.3.10, 2; cf. 1.3.6; 2.28.11). He goes on to ob¬ serve that the principles of societal necessity “commonly too are neglected betwixt distinct Societies,” but this is only to reaffirm that they are not generally observed in the state of nature; it is not to retract the more modest claim that they provide a natural basis for the promulgation of positive laws. In his manuscript “Of Ethick in General,” Locke states that “the general rule” of virtue and vice, “and the most constant that I can find is, that those actions are esteemed virtuous which are thought absolutely necessary to the preservation of society, and those that disturb or dissolve the bonds of community are everywhere esteemed ill and vicious.”31 Likewise in The Reasonableness of Christianity, although he denies that the “bonds of society” introduced by necessity “stood ... on their true foundations,” Locke includes such rules among the “just measures of right and wrong” (243).32 Taken in itself, Locke’s appeal to necessity would yield, in brief outline, something like the following account of the basis of justice. As presented thus far, nature in its socially and politically relevant dimensions comprises those general necessities that move human beings to form societies and submit to governments. Against the classical approach and in keeping with his general Baconian, antiteleological orientation, Locke suggests that we are less “drawn” than “driven” by nature, above all by the “strong desire of Self-preservation” (7T 11.77, 127, 1.86), to form and maintain societies. Now, it should be clear from the argument of the preceding chapter that in affirming a reasonable consensus among human¬ kind on the minimal rules of societal necessity, Locke does not commit himself to a blithe reduction of the rational to the actual in morality. Reasonable moral consensus is hardly immanent in the ordinary course of nature. Mindful of his insistence that a reasonable, if mainly tacit, consensus upon the rules of societal necessity is commonly obscured or adulterated by the far less orderly productions of the human imagination, one best understands Locke’s appeal to necessity as an appeal to a rationalized necessity, or to the potential ground of consensus in a fully reflective, foresighted response to the naturally necessitous condition. Reflection upon the fundamentally necessitous character of the human condition, in its psychological as well as its material dimension, represents the beginning of human

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wisdom about politics. Viewed in this light, Locke’s account of the basic princi¬ ples of justice appears a more harshly realistic ancestor of present-day liberal neutralist theories. Although the content of happiness itself may remain contestable, the construction of moral concepts and rules as the regulative conditions of the human pursuit of happiness can be reasonable and nonrelativistic, according to this suggestion, so far as it is guided by a common awareness of the everthreatening ills of the state of nature. Yet precisely its apparent grounding in necessity renders deeply questionable the long-term stability of this minimal consensus. We establish governments, Locke teaches, “to restrain the partiality and violence of Men”; the preservation of our naturally endangered properties is their “great and chief end” (7TII.13, 124; cf. Works 1823, 6.503-504). The motivation for incorporating ourselves into political societies and submitting to common rules of justice is thus essentially aversive. In Ruth Grant’s reading, Locke holds that the most important task of political theory is “to let men know what political evil is.”33 Justice appears choiceworthy to us only in light of an assessment of the superior power of neces¬ sity, or of our incapacity to do injustice with impunity. In the fragment “Moral¬ ity,” Locke considers the objection that “it may be sometimes a mans advantage to break his word and then I may doe it as contributing to my happynesse,” and in response offers a seemingly Hobbesian suggestion that such happiness as is accessible to us requires a submission to necessity. The generalized breaking of faith would subject us to a condition of “want rapin and force,” rendering it “impossible for any man to be happy unlesse he were both stronger and wiser than the rest of man kinde. ”34 One may be tempted then to regard Lockean justice, like that of Hobbes, as a modem restatement of the ancient conventionalist conception of justice as the ideology of the weak and timid.35 In Locke as in Hobbes, the advent of the consensually minded homo civilis would seem to involve not merely the costuming in respectable attire, but instead the suppression or conquest of the domineering desires of homo naturalist6 But because Locke is more emphatic than Hobbes in promising a conjunction between justice and human freedom and happiness, an account of justice as fundamentally aversive or repressive would pose a much more serious difficulty for Locke than it would for Hobbes.37 In contrast to Hobbes, Locke insists that might cannot make right, that the mle of pure force can establish no legitimate governance (7TII. 19, 172, 176, 180-87, 196). But if we are to conceive of nature as mere nonteleological necessity—as a realm ruled by pure force—then it remains unclear why we should consider subjection to the general rule of nature any more legitimate than subjection to human force. To the contrary, it would seem that the generality of human beings are in the position of the subjects of Ceylon, holding the right and merely awaiting the opportunity to liberate themselves from their subjection (11.92-93). On what grounds can Locke propose a submission to natural necessity as the basis of a reasonable political consensus—in particular in the face of his own observation of the naturalness, at least among some individuals, of the desire to overcome neces¬ sity, to acquire more than one’s share, more than one needs? On what grounds can

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Locke regard as naturally wrong the endeavors, by those who can,™ to conquer the forces of natural necessity—at the extreme, the despotic human being’s en¬ deavor to escape the natural necessity of laboring, or the tyrant’s endeavor to rule and never be ruled by others? On this reading, it appears that just as Locke’s Baconian, experimental natural science embodies a refusal to grant more than provisional authority to the “ordi¬ nary course of nature s productions, so Locke’s moral and political science bears the seeds of a far-reaching rebelliousness. So far as it were built upon the premise of an arbitrary nature (or of a God whose design appears only in such a nature), Locke’s political science would delegitimate governance by any standard external to the self. One would then be compelled to wonder whether the rule of the will or imagination is after all so unreasonable. So far as we conceive of nature in terms of pure force or nonteleological necessity, we are compelled either to understand ourselves as part of or subject to nature, thus denying our freedom and our distinctive humanity, or to understand our freedom and our humanity in terms of a defiant antinaturalism. So far as Locke’s moral-political science claims to be a teaching of liberty, according to this objection, the effectual truth of that science would appear not in the relatively sober republicanism of The Federalist, Thomas Jefferson, Montesquieu, or Tocqueville, but instead in the liberationist, radically destabilizing visions of later modem and postmodern thinkers, in which selfassertion, transgression of boundaries, or free creativity stands as the authentic expressfon of human dignity or distinctiveness. And yet, in this outcome above all, one can see the triumph of a despotic nature, allowing us to conceive of free action only as ceaseless production and destruction or as the arbitrary imposition of form on formlessness—only, that is, as the imitation of nature itself. Within the horizon of this modem, necessitarian conception of the natural condition, one may acknowledge a certain inevitability in the recurrence of such liberationist visions, and even a certain quixotic or tragic nobility. Yet one cannot deny that such visions are often destructive and inevitably futile, as this same conception of nature would imply. In the final analysis, under the rule of a despotic nature, human life would oscillate between slavish submis¬ sion and escapist attempts at liberation or absolute human sovereignty, without ever settling upon the stable ground of free, rational self-government. Bearing in mind his account of the mental disorders characteristic of the state of nature, one can understand why Locke insists upon the antiteleological, necessi¬ tarian character of the rational pursuit of happiness. As we have seen, in his concern about the practical consequences or the “effectual truth” of the premod¬ em, teleological politics of the imagination, Locke bears a close resemblance to Montaigne, who complains of those who “want to get out of themselves and escape from the man” that “instead of changing themselves into angels, they change into beasts.”39 In the face of the insuperable imperfection of the human condition, it is a dangerous error to orient oneself solely or excessively by the visions of human perfection or salvation that animate premodem political philoso¬ phy and theology. Given the mind’s native and persisting neediness, a less cau-

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tious account of the higher, more dignifying dimension of human nature would have the effect of flattery (see 7T 1.3, 10; 11.91), inducing a forgetfulness of the lower and thus intensifying its corruptions. Thus it belongs to the performance of its “under-Labourer’s” function for the properly disciplined Lockean understand¬ ing to disrupt by the harsh light of critical reason the recurring dreams of human completion or finality that enchant our minds and trouble our lives. But Locke’s reasonable sensitivity to the dangers inherent in the premodem forms of escapism does not move him to adopt the purely necessitarian conception of nature characteristic of much modem thought, from which issues an equally dangerous form of escapism, involving a longing for radical freedom or liberation from nature’s arbitrary rule. In a revealing private communication, Locke ob¬ serves that I have often thought that our state here in this world is a State of Mediocrity which is not capeable of extreams though on one side or other of this mediocrity there might lie great excellency and perfection. Thus we are not capeable of continuall rest nor continuall exercise, though the later has certainly much more of excellency in it. We are not able to labor always with the body nor always with the minde. And to come to our present purpose, we are not capeable of liveing altogeather exactly by a strict rule, nor altogeather without one ... not always retired nor always in company. But this being but [an] odde notion of mine it may suffice only to have mentioned it. (CJL #374; also ECHU 4.12.10; 4.14.2)40

What Locke downplays, characteristically, as merely an “odde notion” in fact points to the very center of his moral-political philosophy. The human condition is a condition of ultimate, unalterable dividedness—between rest and motion, body and mind, privacy and society, and most generally between law and anarchy, order and chaos—and the basis of human wisdom lies in a capacity to accommo¬ date oneself to its mixed, incompletely provided character. Given the enduring element of harshness in the natural condition, a clear-sighted, rational response to that condition must include a substantial measure of asceticism, from which both the indolent and the “busy-minded” among us will always be tempted to seek relief. Nonetheless, if Locke is to persuade us that it is truly reasonable to submit to the rule of nature—or that we may best command nature, as Bacon observes, by submitting to it41—he must show us that in this submission lies the possibility of real, solid happiness. Thus the stability of Locke’s moral-political philosophy requires a refinement of the description of the natural condition presented in the preceding chapter. To provide the rational, moral orientation upon which the stability of Locke’s thought depends, the state of nature must be most visibly, but only in part, a condition of great inconvenience and of fearsome dangers against which we must continually fortify our defenses. As a source of moral orientation, the Lockean state of nature must be ultimately two-dimensional. We require a harsh natural necessity to stimulate our industrious activity and focus our rational¬ ity, and we require a beneficent nature to render our submission to that gover¬ nance legitimate, or choiceworthy for a rational agent. To discredit the objection

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that he recommends either an ethic of alienation or an early, incompletely devel¬ oped ancestor of the will-to-power, Locke must show us how, even as we labor to secure ourselves from nature’s penuriousness, in the decisive respect we may affirm the natural condition to which we are subject. What, therefore, is to be affirmed, according to Locke? What has Locke to say, concerning the particular pleasures, states of mind or character, or objects of affirmation that belong in a rational person’s conception of happiness—that can redeem the ordinary and the extraordinary struggles that occupy so much of a rational and industrious individual’s life, and thus govern the negative, destructive projections of the human will?

The “Non-Lockean Locke” Revisited Reflecting on the happiness proper to us in our natural condition of “mediocrity,” Locke affirms the superior dignity of an ethic of motion or labor to one of rest or ease. This affirmation accords with his insistence upon cultivating the virtue of industry in children (STCE 45, 115, 130, 207), his identification of the principle of “increase” as “the great design of God” and “the main intention of Nature” (cf. TT 1.33, 41, 59 with 11.32, 34, 37, 40-48), and his Baconian endeavor to direct the study of nature away from mere contemplation and toward the active ameliora¬ tion of the human condition (ECHU 4.12.11-12).42 Given the imperfection of our knowledge of ends and the enduring element of necessity in human experience, a realistic account of happiness must begin by focusing on means, on the active pursuit rather than the contented enjoyment of happiness. Yet the fact that happiness is variable does not mean that it is simply relative, and the fact that happiness is mixed or incomplete does not justify the character¬ ization of the Lockean ethic as effecting an austere, repressive, joyless alienation. Here again, we misunderstand Locke if we fail to notice his relation to Montaigne. One may readily acknowledge the non-Lockean tone of Montaigne’s description of philosophy as teaching “nothing but merrymaking and a good time,” and yet observe that a similar general spirit animates Locke’s relatively cheerful, light¬ hearted invitation to “eat and drink” and “enjoy what we delight in.” In fact, in this general respect as well as in the particular details of their arguments, there is a close and instructive similarity between Montaigne’s conception of virtue as “the nursing mother of human pleasures” or his insistence that philosophy teach us to recognize “true and solid contentment,”43 and Locke’s declaration that the “high¬ est perfection of intellectual nature, lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness” (ECHU 2.21.51). By recovering its understated and com¬ monly overlooked roots in Montaigne, we can come to see that Locke’s concep¬ tion of happiness is significantly more affirmative, fuller, and more humanly satisfying than that for which his most challenging critics credit him.

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The Freedom and Happiness of the Mind As Locke like Hobbes conceives of happiness in primarily hedonistic terms, so Locke agrees with Hobbes in distinguishing bodily or sensual from mental pleasures and pains. “By Pleasure and Pain, I . . . mean of Body or Mind, as they are commonly distinguished; though in truth, they be only different Constitutions of the Mind, sometimes occasioned by disorder in the Body, sometimes by Thoughts of the Mind (2.20.2).44 More clearly and emphatically than Hobbes, however, Locke stresses the importance of the mind in determining the objects or occasions of pleasurable experience. The negative significance of these observa¬ tions, in particular the last, appears in the preceding chapter’s discussion of the dangerous neediness and errancy with which the mind identifies and pursues the objects of its own peculiar desires. But Locke does not attempt to correct the disorders of the mind simply by yoking it to the more orderly needs or desires of the body. Notwithstanding the dangers, the mind’s errant freedom can serve also to support virtue, and the gratification of the distinctively mental desires can become for many the main constituent of genuine happiness. In keeping with his emphasis on the penuriousness of the natural condition and the imperfection of human happiness, Locke insists that rational happiness depends upon rational labor and that rational labor is commonly painful (7T 11.34, 37, 42, 43). Yet the very mental errancy that is capable of bringing great disorder to our lives can also play a helpful role, in softening considerably the harshness of Locke’s laborious, necessitarian ethic. According to Montaigne, “the soul is the one and sovereign mistress of our condition and conduct” and “may be shaped into all varieties and forms.” Given that, in contrast to the lower animals, “we have emancipated ourselves from nature’s rules to abandon ourselves to the vagabond freedom of our fancies,” Montaigne counsels, “at least let us help ourselves by turning them in the most agreeable direction.”45 Likewise for Locke, the mind’s often errant liberty includes a power, to some considerable degree, to transfigure our mental experiences and even our physical sensations. By a combination of consideration and habituation, we are able “to change the pleasantness, and unpleasantness, that accompanies any sort of action,” or to habituate “the relish of our Minds” to conform with “the true intrinsick good or ill, that is in things” (ECHU 2.21.69, 53; also 46, 56). Herein lies an important addition to our natural equipment for the rational pursuit of happiness. By virtue of the mind’s transfiguring power, we are able to act upon the results of our deliberations concerning real, lasting happiness. More specifically, by virtue of this power we are able to endow means with the charac¬ ter of ends in themselves. We can transform “the pain which relieves pain” into an experience pleasurable in itself.46 Even in its insistence upon the imperative of laboring for our material and psychic well-being, therefore, the Lockean ethic need not reduce to a “joyless quest for joy” or an alienating preoccupation with means. Alongside Locke’s insistence upon the necessity of laboring, one must consider the broad significance of his observation in Some Thoughts Concerning

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Education that “the chief Art” of the wise educator of children “is to make all that they have to do, Sport and Play too” (63; also 72, 74, 108, 123). Locke correspondingly resists an excessively harsh, necessitarian conception of rational action in his treatment of the specifically mental desires. Notwith¬ standing his concern about the dangers that our naturally errant mental desires pose to us, Locke does not deny that the gratification or appeasement of those desires is vital to human happiness. His appreciation of the depth of our natural mental neediness points in fact to the contrary conclusion. Because our anxiety concerning the prospect of mortality, for instance, represents perhaps the single deepest source of human neediness, Locke affirms that a reasonable faith in a heavenly afterlife as a just God’s reward to the virtuous engenders in the faithful an “expectation” that “carries a constant pleasure with it.”47 And we have seen that a further mental need, shallower but more constantly powerful in its hold upon us, is our concern for esteem, for interpersonal recognition or admiration. Good reputation, next to health, is the most lasting pleasure of this life. Our concern for it is our “most excusable frailty.”48 As “We are all a sort of Camelions, that still take a Tincture from Things near us” (STCE 67), it belongs to the middling, mixed, divided human condition that all or virtually all of us be subject to the pleasures and pains associated with interpersonal dependence.49 For Locke, once again in contrast to Rousseau, the achievement of happiness cannot require the radical overcoming of this amour propre, but must rest only upon its rational regulatiqn. We must turn the powerful concern for reputation against its own vices, drawing from our very dependence upon others’ opinions sustenance for the independent-spiritedness required for our rational happiness. Thus Locke teaches that a “Mind free, and Master of it self and all its Actions ... is what every one is taken with” (66). Yet the specifically emotional aspect of our mental neediness goes beyond our desire for esteem, manifesting itself in a desire for a still stronger social bond. In the Essay's chapter “Of Modes of Pleasure and Pain,” Locke adumbrates an important distinction concerning types of pleasurable objects and the forms of pleasure that they produce in us. Were it my business here, to enquire any farther ... I should remark, that our Love and Hatred of inanimate insensible Beings, is commonly founded on that Pleasure and Pain which we receive from their use and application any way to our Senses, though with their Destruction: But Hatred or Love, to Beings capable of Happiness or Misery, is often the Uneasiness or Delight, which we find in our selves arising from a consider¬ ation of their very Being, or Happiness. Thus the Being and Welfare of a Man’s Children and Friends, producing constant Delight in him, he is said constantly to love them. (2.20.5)50

One may wonder how Locke’s hedonism can cohere with this observation. Despite the fact that the concern for reputation involves one’s relations with others, it remains an essentially subjective, egoistic concern, perhaps capable of gratification through deceit or manipulation. By contrast, in this observation

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concerning love, Locke claims that we often experience a nonutilitarian, selfless delight in the very existence or happiness of our children and friends, or in other words that we regard certain animate beings as possessing intrinsic worth, irre¬ spective of the uses or applications to which we might put them. This observation arouses special curiosity, in the face of the anecdotes that he repeatedly and prominently deploys concerning the predations to which various peoples have subjected even their own children (ECHU 1.3.9-12, 7TI.57-59; also LN fol. 74). To make sense of Locke’s observation concerning our delight in the existence of others, one must focus less on any quality intrinsic to those others than on a particular manifestation of our own subjective desire. Locke explains our devotion to our children, in the usual cases in which we are devoted to our children, by reference to the mental pleasure of self-extension,51 as an imaginative outgrowth of our natural self-concernment. “God planted in Men a strong desire also of propagating their Kind, and continuing themselves in their Posterity.” Parents are taught by “Natural Love and Tenderness to provide for [their children] as a part of themselves" (1.88, 97; emphasis supplied). While one must acknowledge an element of rhetorical exaggeration or misdi¬ rection in this reference to “Natural Love and Tenderness,” it is nonetheless an error to read out of Lockean psychology the quiet, “non-Lockean” softening of the individualist austerity with which Locke tends commonly to treat interpersonal affections. Granted, his apparently casual enumeration of “other Modes of Plea¬ sure” in the Essay contains only a passing reference to the “Pleasure of Musick” and its power to soothe “the pain of tender Eyes” (2.20.18). And there is surely some light comedy in the bachelor Locke’s appropriation of St. Paul to indicate “what it is, that chiefly drives Men into the enjoyments of a conjugal life” (2.21.34). One may note here, however, that Locke’s private correspondence itself reveals a heart imperfectly fortified, in his younger years and even well beyond, against the arrows of romantic longing.52 And much more revealing of his estimation of the importance of social affections as constituents of human happi¬ ness is his treatment of the experience of friendship. It is of great importance to recognize that Locke’s clearly anti-Aristotelian view of the political significance of friendship does not proceed from any neglect or negative assessment of the more general relation of friendship to human happiness. Just as in Some Thoughts Concerning Education he modifies the austerity of the Second Treatise in regard to family life,53 so in both private and public writings Locke modifies or deepens his account of friendship, revealing a significantly more humane appreciation of the worth, the great power and sweetness, of the experience of true friendship or interpersonal love. Even in the Essay Locke provides some slight hints of this, mentioning without comment the common acceptation of the word “Friend” as “a Man, who loves, and is ready to do good to another” (2.28.18), and offering as an instance of “other Modes of Pleasure” undiscussed in the chapter devoted to that subject “the pleasure of rational conversation with a Friend” (2.20.18). More expansively, in

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an unpublished 1676 journal entry, Locke distinguishes purer from more utilitarian forms of friendship, observing that although men often love their friends with whose good offices or conversation they are delighted, endeavoring and wishing their good, thereby to preserve to themselves those things they have pleasure in . . . [s]ome wise minds are of a nobler constitution, having pleasure in the very being and happiness of their friends, and some yet of a more excellent make are delighted with existence and happiness of all good men, some with that of all mankind in general, and this last may be said properly to love.54 Striking a more personal note in the “Epistle Dedicatory” of Some Thoughts Concerning Education, addressed to his friend Edward Clarke, Locke professes to “know no greater Pleasure in this Life, nor a better Remembrance to be left behind one, than a long, continued Friendship, with an honest, useful, and worthy Man, and lover of his Country.”55 And in his private correspondence, he ex¬ presses a similar, still more profound sentiment in regard to a still more elevated friendship. In one of his many letters to his dear friend William Molyneux, Locke expresses his heartfelt disappointment at the postponement of a planned meeting, and declares that “when the conveniences of life are moderately provided for,” our earthly existence holds for him “nothing of value . . . equal to the conversa¬ tion of a knowing, ingenious, and large-minded friend” (CJL #2115, 8/4/1696).56 In an earlier letter to Molyneux, Locke expressed this opinion still more emphati¬ cally: “The only riches I have valued or laboured to acquire . . . has been the friendship of ingenious and worthy men.”57 Upon receiving the news of his friend’s untimely death, a grief-stricken Locke wrote to Thomas Molyneux that Death has with a violent hand . . . snatched from you a dear brother ... I bear too great a share in the loss, and am too sensibly touched with it myself ... to do anything but mingle my tears with yours. I have lost in your brother ... an intimate and sincere friend whom I truly loved and by whom I was truly loved. And what a loss that is, those only can be sensible who know how valuable and how scarce a true friend is and how far to be preferred to all other sorts of treasure. (10/27/1698) 58 In the light of such remarks, the self as Locke understands it cannot be viewed in any simple sense as an “appropriating” or “possessive” or “productive” con¬ sciousness.59 Human beings are beings whose common, uninstructed happiness lies less in the “having” of “things” narrowly understood than in the experience of self-extension, or in the security, comfort, and expansive self-affirmation that we gain from the identification of ourselves with other selves. To the degree that it is just to regard Locke as a teacher of individualism, Locke’s individualism stands not as an unexamined premise, but instead as the product of an extensive regime of education and self-discipline.60 The spirit of calculating coolness with which Locke often treats friendship as well as romantic and familial love is surely an important aspect of this educational regime. Yet this educational strategy entails no denial or repression of these vital sources of our happiness, but rather repre-

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sents an attempt to subject our commonly errant, profligate social identifications to rational governance and thus to render them more solid, reliable sources of happiness. Like Montaigne’s more effusive description, Locke’s treatment of friendship presents a twofold aspect, alternating a public, politic reserve proper to common friendships with a private warmth proper to true, pure friendships. Praising Aristotle’s definition of true friendship as harboring one soul in two bodies, Montaigne yet reminds his readers “how far from common usage and how rare such a friendship is.” Therefore the precept of Chilo, “which is so abomina¬ ble in this sovereign and masterful friendship, is healthy in the practice of ordinary and customary friendships: ‘Love him as if you are to hate him some day; hate him as if you are to love him. ’ ”61 By his implicit primary counsel to practice the wary, self-owning reserve proper to common friendships, Locke means not to deny cynically that any other kind exists but rather to prepare us to distinguish the true from the common. To be sure, one wishes that Locke had said more concerning his understanding of true friendship. It seems likely, as just suggested, that Locke would understand the desire for friendship as an expression of the capacity for self-extension, often fueled by a desire for belonging. Yet it is clear that Locke would regard a friend¬ ship based mainly on emotional neediness as slavish and unreliable. As his own general statements as well as his admiration of his friend Molyneux’s knowledge, ingenuity, and large-mindedness indicate, Locke holds that the highest, most solidly pleasurable friendship is a rational friendship, a friendship in reason. The key to what is ultimately lovable in human beings lies in what is lovable in the faculty or activity of reason itself. Whether it appears as a means for governing our desires or as an object of desire itself, at the bottom of the question of happi¬ ness lies the question of the status of reason.

Rationality, Happiness, and the Beneficence of Nature Near the close of his illuminating reflections on Locke’s vision of human nature, Pangle expresses an ambivalence as to the answer to this most important question. The originally Socratic, genuinely philosophic experience that has been lost by more recent modem and postmodern thinkers, he observes intriguingly, remains alive in Locke, whose aim is to advance the cause of reason or the philo¬ sophic life, despite his refusal to make this life an explicit theme of his writings. Yet just a few pages earlier, Pangle charges that “Locke does loudly ‘sell’ philosophy—to the utilitarians, for their utilitarian reasons,”62 Although his final judgment seems to be that Locke fails to devote adequate consideration to the grounds or conditions of the philosophic inspiration, Pangle’s view nonetheless differs instructively from the usual scholarly opinions of Locke’s eclecticism and ultimate incoherence. Despite his apparent neglect of the particular example of Socrates or the Socratic life, Locke does aim to advance the cause of reason and even the philosophic life as he understands it. As Pangle implicitly suggests, the advancement of the cause of reason as Locke understands it requires the forging

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of a stable partnership between the spirit of Socrates and the utilitarian spirit. Once again in keeping with his middling conception of the human condition, Locke resists adopting either a dangerously flattering conception of reason as a pure end in itself or an ultimately nihilistic instrumentalism. Mindful of the prospects for and the limits of human freedom and happiness, Locke seeks to establish a stable, moderate position between these extremes, such that the activity of reason serves as both means and end, as both an indispensable condition and a vital element of human happiness.63 What must be added to Pangle’s suggestion, however, is that we can best understand the nature of the partnership that Locke endeavors to forge by viewing it alongside its proximate model, the imitation and modification of the Socratic life effected by Montaigne. Undeniably, much of Locke’s presentation of the activity of reason appears in his critical, progressivist conception of natural science; and the vocation of natural science as he presents it appears to involve a considerable degree of asceticism as well as a still more troublingly un-Socratic measure of intellectual closure. As we saw in chapter three, in the realization that nature yields no final knowledge of natural essences, Locke recommends that we reconceive the study of nature as involving the endless accumulation of historical knowledge of and control over the powers and relations of natural bodies (ECHU 3.3; 3.6; 4.3.6-30; 4.12.11-12). It would seem, then, that however abundant our prospective compensation in the expansion of our powers, the fact remains that we need to be compensated in this transaction, so far as we are undertaking to transform science from an end into a means, or to reconceive it as a form of productive labor. Moreover, the recom¬ mendation that we direct our inquiries away from those “Things, to which our Understandings are not suited” and toward the enhancement of our utility, and in particular our technological prowess (1.1.4-5), may seem to reflect a fundamental partiality or intellectual closure on Locke’s part. The assignment of philosophy to serve as a mere “Under-Labourer” (“Epistle to the Reader,” 10) to prepare the advancement of technological science may seem to identify Locke’s thought as a form of pragmatism, grounded in a reduction of the knowable to the effectual that is far more Machiavellian than Socratic. In response to this line of argument, one might notice first that even in this largely un-Socratic pursuit of technological natural science, certain Socratic elements are visible. Whatever the partiality implicit in its pragmatic orientation, for instance, Locke holds that the proper study of nature in our condition of “Mediocrity” must assume the character of an indefinite, aporetic striving, sus¬ tained and limited by our modest acknowledgment of our ultimate, only partially ameliorable ignorance of the natural order (ECHU 1.1.5; 4.12.10). Further, Lockean science resembles Socratic philosophizing in the pleasing or even joyful aspect that Locke ascribes to it. While reasoning is unquestionably laborious, it is not unalterably painful or burdensome. Like other forms of labor, it may be transfigured by a “due considering” into an intrinsically pleasant activity. In the Essay's “Epistle to the Reader,” Locke employs a metaphor that he may have borrowed directly from Plato’s Socrates, in declaring that the understanding is

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“the most elevated Faculty of the Soul . . . employed with a greater, and more constant Delight than any of the other. Its searches after Truth, are a sort of Hawking and Hunting, wherein the very pursuit makes a great part of the Plea¬ sure” (6; also 1.1.1).64 Yet the measures of intrinsic delight and intellectual openness that the prag¬ matic study of nature may permit do not touch the main point: Lockean rationality is not in the decisive respect reducible to technological rationality, or to a Machia¬ vellian (or Baconian or Hobbesian) accumulation of power. In presenting his own philosophizing as the work of an “Under-Labourer” to modem science or as mere “Sport,” the “diversion of some of my idle and heavy hours,” Locke means not to effect the “most curious deprecation” of reason that worries Pangle,65 but only to govern his rhetoric in accordance with his healthy mistrust of the vanity and flattery that are too easily associated with the Platonic pursuit of the sumrnum bonum. Although the proper scope of human reason may appear narrow in relation to “the vast Ocean of Being” into which the mind is apt rashly to cast itself, Locke assures us in a characteristic understatement that “Men may find Matter sufficient to busy their Heads, and employ their Hands with Variety, Delight, and Satisfac¬ tion” if they would only attend to the serious business of reason, which is to know those things that concern our conduct (1.1.7, 5, 6). Despite his apparent dismissal of the inquiries characteristic of the philosophers of old, Locke does insist that reason rightly employed bears an obligation to reflect on the nature or substance of happiness, not merely on the means to happi¬ ness however conceived. “[W]hen, upon due Examination, we have judg’d, we have done our duty ... in pursuit of our happiness” (2.21.47). As Pangle ob¬ serves, Locke thus provides hints of the persistence in his own thought of the Socratic spirit of comprehensive philosophic inquiry, and of the ultimately aporetic character of moral as well as scientific inquiry. Yet the rational life as it is pre¬ sented in Locke’s works is multileveled. The life of reason from which Locke proposes that we derive our moral-political orientation is not the life of indefinite striving proper only to a very few, but rather draws heavily upon the more solid, more accessible, neo-Stoic and neo-Epicurean modification of the Socratic life effected by Montaigne. It is the rational life in the latter form in particular, in Locke’s view, that represents the achievement of a state of mind or character that is elemental to “true and solid” human happiness. To see this, let us first revisit Locke’s observation that “the greatest Happiness consists, in the having those things, which produce the greatest Pleasure; and in the absence of those, which cause any disturbance, any pain” (2.21.55; cf. 2.20.7). Two suggestions as to the meaning of this observation are vitally impor¬ tant for clarifying the relation of happiness and the life of reason in Locke. First, in conceiving of the greatest happiness primarily as the having of things, Locke conceives of the basic element of happiness as a settled possession, not a striving. Notwithstanding his stated judgment that the life of “exercise” or activity “has certainly much more of excellency in it,” Locke conceives of happiness neither exclusively as motion nor as a succession of pleasurable or pleasure-producing

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activities—once again, neither as Socratic, erotic striving nor as Hobbesian felicity66—but more fundamentally as a state of being or rest that supplies the moral and psychological grounding for the active, industrious life. Second, one must take care to understand the rank ordering that guides and limits Locke’s conception of the greatest happiness as the having of things. For as the “Things of this World are in so constant a Flux, that nothing remains long in the same State” (7TII.157; cf. ECHU 3.3.19), the most important constitutive possession of happiness does not belong to the class of material things or even to the more general class of goods external to the self. The life of reason is vital to happiness because what it secures for us, the most important constitutive possession of happiness, is possession of one’s self. The “first step in our endeavors after happiness,” Locke observes, is “to get wholly out of the confines of misery, and to feel no part of it. ” It is of course impossible, and in Locke’s view it would be undesirable as well, to free ourselves finally from all uneasiness. But as pain is “the most importunate of all Sensa¬ tions,” and as at least the most extreme and powerful uneasinesses are capable literally of taking possession of our minds and depriving us of our liberty, we must struggle to gain and hold possession of ourselves by overcoming our most domi¬ neering, disordering uneasinesses (ECHU 2.21.46; 2.1.21; 2.21.53). It is with this imperative in mind, for instance, that Locke counsels parents or educators to cultivate in children a measure of stoic superiority to physical pain in particular 0STCE 3< 5-6, 33, 48, 107, 115). He cannot recommend that we become equally inured to mental uneasinesses, given the usefulness of such uneasinesses, espe¬ cially those associated with one’s reputation, for the governance of children and adults alike. Yet, so far as it remains true for Locke that the greatest, most dan¬ gerous threats to our mental stability derive from the class of specifically mental uneasinesses, the self-possession requisite to happiness ultimately consists in mental more than in physical endurance. In turn, the cultivation of the mental endurance requisite to self-possession depends upon the achievement, in one form or another, of a fundamental self-knowledge. The “quiet Possession of a Man’s self,” a “noble and manly Steadiness” in preserving the calm use of reason and the execution of its dictates in the face of danger or evil, is Locke’s definition of “True Fortitude” (STCE 115). But as fortitude makes possible the calm use of reason, so reason makes possible the disposition of fortitude. It enables us to understand that we need not be over¬ whelmed by our fears. More precisely, it enables us to distinguish the reasonable fears that we must learn to endure as they move us to action, from the unreason¬ able fears that we must simply suppress or remove from our experience. Most fundamentally, the self-knowledge that sustains our fortitude and self-possession is a knowledge of the human condition—of what we may reasonably fear and hope, of our powers and responsibility to ameliorate our condition and the limits of those powers. Locke supplies at least the foundations of the requisite selfknowledge, in his introductory statement of the purpose of his most important work. Among the most dangerous vices of the “busy Mind of Man” is its propen-

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sity to destroy its greatest perfection through a concupiscent demand for compre¬ hensive and demonstrative knowledge that is doomed to collapse into “perfect Scepticism.” To combat this danger, Locke urges us to know ourselves, and accordingly to practice a wise moderation in the employment of our faculties (ECHU 1.1.4, 7). “Greatness of soul,” observes Montaigne, “is not so much pressing upward and forward as knowing how to set oneself in order and circum¬ scribe oneself. . . . and the most barbarous of all maladies is to despise our being.”67 We must not “boldly quarrel with [our] own Constitution,” Locke advises in a similar spirit, “and throw away the Blessings [our] Hands are fill’d with, because they are not big enough to grasp every thing” (1.1.5). Once again, measured against the example of Socrates, who hardly bore his ignorance quietly, Locke’s counsel “to sit down in a quiet Ignorance of those Things, which, upon Examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our Capacities” (1.1.4) may appear unphilosophic. For Montaigne and for Locke, however, there is more to philosophy, perhaps more even to Socratic philosophy, than the relentless, boundless, and sometimes politically irresponsible questioning for which Socrates is famous. Socrates stands for Montaigne “as a pattern and ideal of all sorts of perfection” not only for his striving for wisdom but also for the actual wisdom that he displays in the exercise of extraordinary courage, generosity, and self-discipline. One might say that for Socrates as traditionally understood, such moral virtues temper or combat the disturbances caused by the lower desires, and thus liberate the mind for the higher, erotic striving for wis¬ dom; whereas for Montaigne, concerned that we bring moderation especially to the aspiration for virtue itself, the most salutary exercise of Socratic self-discipline appears precisely in its governance of the highest desire, the desire for compre¬ hensive wisdom. In Montaigne’s reading, Socrates’ renunciation of his “preSocratic” investigations in natural philosophy reflects a mature, sober determina¬ tion to focus his inquiries upon what is useful to human life. And what is useful to us is what brings us happiness, which depends “on the tranquillity and content¬ ment of a well-born spirit and the resolution and assurance of a well-ordered soul.” For “what good is the knowledge of things if by it we lose the repose and tranquillity we should enjoy without it. . . ?” Truly Socratic philosophy, philoso¬ phy in its noblest and worthiest incarnation, in this view, is the activity in which we come to know ourselves, in which we acquire the knowledge that enables us to live well and to die well, in repose and tranquillity.68 In his counsel to know ourselves in our powers and limits, to see clearly the happiness that our condition affords and to adjust our desires accordingly, Locke declares his own sympathy for the spirit of tranquil, moderate, humane philoso¬ phizing that Montaigne draws from Socrates. In the most important respect, the “quiet Ignorance” that Locke recommends to us refers not to the silence left by the cessation of inquiry in certain areas, but rather to the equanimity that we may enjoy upon overcoming our minds’ deepest, most disturbing uneasinesses. More¬ over, that Locke believes it possible and reasonable for us to maintain a serene, quiet composure in the face of our ignorance with respect to certain ultimate

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questions means that Locke believes our knowledge, incomplete as it is, sufficient to justify our affirmation of the genuine happiness in our condition. The attitude of quiet contentment with which Locke implores us to receive the Essay's teaching contrasts significantly with the rebelliousness implicit in the early, unpublished manuscript on the law of nature, in which, whatever the appearance, Locke’s contention that man would never have created himself either mortal or so seriously defective in knowledge is tantamount to a denial of God’s benevolence, and perhaps therewith of God’s existence (LN fol. 55). In contrast to those who attribute to him a vision of a bleak, penurious, altogether miserable natural human condition, I find little irony in the mature Locke’s comforting insistence that “Men have Reason to be well satisfied with what God hath thought fit for them, since he has given them (as St. Peter says,) . . . Whatsoever is necessary for the Conve¬ niences of Life, and Information of Vertue. . . .The Candle, that is set up in us, shines bright enough for all our Purposes” (1.1.5). In the Essay's introductory chapter, Locke does not specify the questions that are beyond our powers to answer, or the respects in which we must live content¬ edly with our intellectual unprovidedness. On the basis of the arguments that he elaborates as the work proceeds, however, one can suppose reasonably that the questions concerning the true natures or essences of substantial beings and con¬ cerning our prospects for an afterlife are foremost among these. More controver¬ sially, against some of Locke’s explicit declarations but (as explained in chapter two) in 'conformity with the logic of his argument, one might also include the question concerning the historical authentication of claims of particular divine revelation. Supposing, then, even these forms of intellectual and spiritual unprovidedness—supposing a condition in which ultimate knowledge of the natures of things is inaccessible to us and in which God reveals his design to us, if at all, only as it is manifested in the world of creation or nature—one has yet no cause for rebelliousness or despair. Even for those who may wonder about a heavenly reward, but can see no reason actively to hope for it—even in the face of the thought that we are mere transients, “a Company of poor Insects”—Locke finds sufficient reason to affirm the fundamental beneficence of nature. To consider what appears the most substantial evidence to the contrary, in the Second Treatise's crucial chapter on property Locke’s repeated references to unimproved nature as “waste” proceed in substantial part from a pedagogical imperative to excite human industry, and they reflect in fact a partial view of na¬ ture’s provision. Notwithstanding his contention that nature furnishes only the “materials of plenty,” that is, the “almost worthless Materials, as in themselves” (11.41, 43), viewed in a larger perspective that remains Locke’s perspective, nature’s provisions are far from worthless. The natural condition of actual penury but potential plenty does not indicate the malevolence or indifference of God or nature toward humankind. To the contrary, the natural provision in its incomplete¬ ness and austerity is best understood as analogous to the provisions of wise parents and governments for their children and subjects. Providing for us not happiness, to be sure, but a constant desire for happiness along with the means and the

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external stimuli for pursuing it, nature provides all that a self-respecting, selfpossessing rational being would require. As rational industry is the necessary condition of the liberty and happiness of which, among all earthly creatures, human beings are uniquely capable, according to Locke, so uneasiness is the condition of industry (ECHU 2.21.34ff.; STCE 126). The governance of nature as well as that of parent and prince therefore must involve some mixture of severity with gentleness.69 To prepare children for the exercising of responsibility and to promote their ultimate happiness, parents ought not simply to provide good things for them but rather to teach them to provide for themselves, even to the extent of encouraging small children to make their own toys (STCE 130). Likewise, it is the mark of a “wise and godlike" prince not to attempt to provide the conveniences of life for a population of passive consumersubjects, but instead “by established laws of liberty to secure protection and encouragement to the honest industry of Mankind.” Whatever his motivation or intention, such a prince appears godlike, in Locke’s view, in adopting policies that have the effect of enabling the members of society to provide responsibly for themselves (7T 11.42; emphasis supplied). There is no necessary irony in Locke’s observation that the painfulness of the human condition “gives us new occasion of admiring the Wisdom and Goodness of our Maker,” who thus supplies some guidance for our activity {ECHU2.7.4). Montesquieu does not contradict Locke’s teaching, but rather captures its essential spirit in remarking that “Nature is just toward men. She rewards them for their pains; she makes them hard workers because she attaches greater rewards to greater work.”70 Notwithstanding the occasional, partly tactical harshness of his rhetoric concerning the divine or natural provision, God or nature stands in Locke’s thought as the model for wise parents and governments, teaching industry, foresight, and responsibility by allowing and requiring humankind to make for ourselves the things that we need and enjoy.71 In allowing us freedom and requiring of us responsibility, God or nature allows us to lapse into lives of errancy and misery, but also makes it possible for us to enjoy a deeper, more meaningful happiness than that available to purely sensual beings. Our ultimate affirmation of the natural provision and of the sort of happiness that it makes possible for us depends ultimately, however, upon a still more profound exercise of self-ownership or responsibility. Our achievement of true and solid happiness depends significantly upon our capacity to moderate the desire for happiness itself. Locke’s attempt to discredit the pursuit of the summum bonum as the vain pursuit of “the Philosophers of old” represents the centerpiece of his attempt to steer us away from extreme expressions of (what we might today call) perfectionism, or the desire for perfect action based upon perfect knowledge. As a fixation upon the most perfect imaginable happiness is likely to make one’s present life seem miserable by comparison, so a determination to choose the one best course of action at every given moment is likely to produce a state of paraly¬ sis.72 Because it is impossible for us to foresee all the consequences of our actions and often impossible for us to comprehend the full range of possible actions, we

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are not capable of pure, perfect self-ownership or perfect responsibility. We must therefore take care to resist the self-destructive, presumptuous inclination to demand more than the human condition can afford us. We must “not perempto¬ rily, or intemperately require Demonstration, and demand Certainty, where Probability only is to be had.” And probability, Locke adds, “is sufficient to govern all our Concernments” (ECHU 1.1.5, emphasis supplied). We must preserve a responsible understanding of responsibility itself. That we cannot overcome the power of chance, and thus cannot be certain of the reward of the life of rational industry, means not that we should despair of that life, but rather that we must learn to rest satisfied with the knowledge that that life normally secures the happiness that it is reasonable for us to pursue. This policy of adjusting our desires to fit better our powers requires that the truly rational person moderate not only the desire for perfect secular happiness but also the desire for immortal or eternal happiness. Because “Death,” not pain or poverty, is normally “the King of Terrors” (STCE 115), the achievement of full rational self-possession requires that one come to terms with the unsettling fact of mortality. By showing us that it lies within our power to secure a “comfortable Provision for this Life,” Locke means to supply some substantial ballast to steady the mind in its pursuit of happiness. His steadfast denial that a just God (such as the Biblical God) could punish the rational, industrious pursuit of happiness in this life is intended to remove a major obstacle to the same end. Yet, while our reflec¬ tion upon our capacity to secure for ourselves “the Conveniences of this life” may provide indispensable assistance to the Lockean project of stabilizing the mind and properly focusing our powers, it may seem insufficient in itself to guarantee the success of that project, as the promise of secular happiness cannot fully compen¬ sate for the promise of an eternal, unmixed, divine, or heavenly happiness. To repeat, this difficulty does not lead Locke to recommend a mental posture of willed or cultivated obliviousness to the question of our ultimate destiny.73 In counselling at least some of the Essay's readers to redirect their intellectual energies away from fruitless efforts to resolve the deep questions of ontology and theology and toward the more practically useful, more genuinely charitable study of nature (4.12.12), Locke does not attempt to remedy our theological escapism by simply replacing it with a technological escapism. However indirect his treat¬ ment of the subject, for Locke, too, philosophy is above all the art of dying. The recognition that “no rational Man can avoid” thinking of “a future state” and therefore of the prospect of mortality, at least “sometimes” (4.20.6), represents the ultimate basis of Locke’s insistence that a substantial measure of fortitude or self-overcoming is indispensable to the life of rational self-possession (STCE 115). It is by virtue of this philosophic fortitude that the most austerely rational can maintain a quiet composure in the face of their ultimate ignorance, facing squarely the mysteriousness of the human condition and yet finding the strength to affirm the proposition that whatever our ultimate destiny, a life that, however imperfect, deserves the name of happiness lies within reach of our earthly powers.74

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Although the rational life as Locke conceives of it represents a modification of and even a divergence from the philosophic life in its original Socratic incarnation, the achievement of the desired state of reasonableness does serve in Locke’s thought as the functional replacement of the telos or state of perfection in the predominant moral-political philosophy of classical antiquity. For Locke, it is proper to the middling human condition that the rational life is neither a pure end nor a pure means, but is instead a combination of the two. Like bodily health, the rational life as the health of the mind is both pleasant in itself and the indispens¬ able condition of the enjoyment of all particular pleasures. It is the achievement of this state of self-possession that enables a relative few, in Locke’s observation, to secure so much happiness “as to afford them a constant train of moderate mean Pleasures, without any mixture of uneasiness,” such that “they could be content to stay here for ever” (2.21.44). The industrious striving that Locke urges upon us represents no neurotic self-deprivation or joyless quest for joy, nor a peculiar indulgence of the fantasy of radical human sovereignty. For beneath it lies a fundamental serenity, bom of our affirmative reflection on a nature that, in its severe but liberal, beneficent dispensation, allows us to rule it even as we are ultimately ruled by it. The faculty that enables us to reflect upon the truth of the human condition and to take responsibility for governing ourselves in accordance with that truth provides the ultimate justification for the measure of perfectionism that endures in Locke’s political philosophy: “The right improvement, and exer¬ cise of our Reason, being the highest Perfection, that a Man can attain to in this Life” (STCE 122).

Rational Happiness and Justice: The Problem of the State of Nature Revisited In the foregoing account of rational happiness, one can find a significant part of the justification for Locke’s claim that conformity with the requirements of justice is choice worthy for a rational person. In its primary, negative significance, Lockean justice signifies a disposition to respect others’ rights or to avoid harming others in their lives, health, liberty, or possessions (7TII.6). On the basis of what has been said in this chapter, the choiceworthiness of justice for a fully rational person means minimally that injustice is not choice worthy. So far as the desire for injustice or tyranny represents a desire to transcend necessity or to enjoy a condi¬ tion of perfect sovereignty and perfect providedness, it points us toward a life of unhappiness rather than happiness. Unable or unwilling to understand the indis¬ pensable contribution of mental discipline to solid, stable happiness, the tyrant as a creature of ungovemed appetite resembles the child who learns from others’ indulgence of his various desires “to wander after change, and superfluity ... to be unquiet. . . and never to be satisfied with what [he] hath” (STCE 130). For the truly rational, happiness requires self-government, and self-government requires the governance of the disordering desires, especially of the desire to rule others.

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Properly understood, direct political involvements have for Locke little genuine appeal as objects of desire. Rather, they have something of the character of an untergehen or a descent into the cave, undertaken reluctantly in response to some emergent necessity.75 Yet justice appears in the Second Treatise not only in the negative obligation to refrain from harming others but also in an affirmative obligation “to preserve the rest of Mankind” (6). Locke’s accompanying qualification of this obligation notwithstanding, one need not regard this statement as merely rhetorical. The practice of justice on the part of the truly rational reflects in part Locke’s under¬ standing of the social dimensions of human happiness. Although a desire for reflective privacy may play the main part in moving such persons to assume the philosophic and political responsibility for constructing and defending the condi¬ tions of the rational life, a desire for the pleasant and elevating associations of a rational community forms some significant part of the motivation as well. As we are subject to the middling condition of corporeal-rational beings, we are unable to live “always retired. ” Although the desires for communitarian belonging and friendship—the desires for recognition and for self-extension—are often dangerous desires, they are yet natural desires and vital constituents of human happiness. As such, they are not to be simply suppressed, but rather subjected to rational gover¬ nance. Not only, therefore, does the Lockean claim of property in oneself logi¬ cally entail a commitment to the principles of egalitarian natural rights,76 but also, more fundamentally, the Lockean principle of rationality in the pursuit of happi¬ ness dictates that we make this claim of property in ourselves and extend it to others with whom we would live in a rational society. We should not think of a political society proper as a community of friends, but we certainly should think of it as a society united in respect for the faculty that makes true friendship, and more generally a truly happy life, possible. The rational pursuit of happiness requires the construction and preservation of a just community of rational equals. With this conjunction of rational happiness and egalitarian justice now in view, we have reached the summit, but not the conclusion, of the argument. The happi¬ ness proper to rational, self-possessing persons stands in Locke’s argument as the solution to the problems inherent in the state of nature or the natural condition of humankind. But on Locke’s own principles, it can provide a true solution to those problems only so far as it can become politically effective. The question of how to cultivate an effective desire for rational self-possession is no merely secondary, instrumental question. To the contrary, it is vital to the credibility of Locke’s entire political-philosophical enterprise. At this point we return to the questions raised near the end of chapter two and sharpened in chapter four, concerning the relation between the normative and the empirical in Locke’s argument. Once again, notwithstanding his assertion in closing the Essay that the normative and the empirical, moral and natural philoso¬ phy, are “wholly separate and distinct one from another” (4.21.5), Locke judges pagan moral philosophies defective precisely for the reason that they “left virtue unendowed” (RC 245). An incapacity to become actual, an imaginary, ethereal

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existence as a mere “Castle in the Air” (ECHU 4.4.9), constitutes for Locke a fatal defect in a given moral-political design. We must yet consider, therefore, whether Locke’s doctrine of egalitarian natural rights based on rational self¬ ownership is itself sufficiently “endowed,” or within the range of empirically realistic moral-political possibilities. We must consider the realistic scope of the rational community that Locke would form, in particular with a view toward Locke’s distinction, especially outside the Two Treatises, between (biological) human beings and (rational) persons. To show that happiness requires the forma¬ tion of a community of rational equals does not suffice in itself to show that the principle of jural equality in the pursuit of happiness extends properly to the class of human beings in general. As the preceding chapter made clear, just as Locke sometimes overstates the clarity with which the law of nature is accessible to human reason, so too he sometimes overstates the naturalness of the faculty of reason itself. He certainly does not count even common human rationality among nature’s spontaneous productions, neither in individuals upon reaching adulthood nor in societies in the ordinary course of their historical development. “Thus we are bom Free, as we are bom Rational; not that we have actually the Exercise of either” (7T 11.61). Upon recommending a presumption that “Age” brings us both, Locke immediately signals the pmdential character of that presumption, acknowledging that rationality and a title to freedom do not come to us by virtue of the simple passage of time, in die ordinary course of nature or history, or, for that matter, by divine endow¬ ment, but instead only in a long, arduous, and ongoing struggle, as the product of a proper education. One should consider in this context the progressively unfolding significance of Locke’s claim that each of us possesses “a Property in his own Person” (11.27; cf. 44, 123). For we acquire property in ourselves and the rights proper to self¬ owning beings much as we acquire material property, through our own labor. And as the Second Treatise's chapter “Of Property” proceeds, the tme nature and extent of labor’s contribution gradually become evident. Contrary to initial appear¬ ances, Locke does not hold that we establish a fully developed property right through primitive gathering or through any vaguely defined “mixing” of one’s unimproved labor with the spontaneously produced fmits of nature. By such means, we may justly claim only to have “begun” (30) or established a minimal, inchoate property right. As Locke reveals in an underappreciated passage, our material property becomes “perfectly” ours only when we can claim responsibility for its creation, by the application of “Invention and Arts” (44, emphasis sup¬ plied; cf. 27-31). Locke’s pregnantly modem grounding of the property right in the creative power of human labor suggests that, while nature helpfully supplies the “materials,” human beings as genuine persons are in large part self-made.77 In comparison with the other materials to which human labor applies its cre¬ ative powers, the human “materials” are often extraordinarily resistant to rational reformation, raising gravely serious questions in particular concerning the fitness for humankind of Locke’s doctrine of egalitarian, natural-human rights. In observ-

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ing among humankind a natural psychological class division even sharper than that observed by Machiavelli,78 Locke implicitly raises the question whether the majority of human beings are suited by nature to submit to the domination that the few desire, with neither class naturally suited for rational self-government. In the ordinary course of the natural-historical development of humankind as Locke presents it, one indeed finds a troubling degree of support for the dismal proposi¬ tion that one of Locke’s most illustrious students would memorably reject with virtually the final stroke of his pen, that “the mass of mankind has . . . been bom with saddles on their backs, [and] a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately.”79 Moreover, not only do the natural passions and imaginations of human beings constitute powerful obstructions of the cause of rational self-government, but at least in the large majority, Locke seems at times to observe, the capacity of reason to overcome such obstmctions is remarkably slight. The questionableness of the premise of presumptive adult human equality in rationality appears not only in Locke’s distinction of the idea of person from that of man or human being (ECHU 2.27.6-8) but much more strikingly in a further echo of Montaigne. There is “a difference of degrees in Men’s Understandings, Apprehensions, and Reasonings,” Locke remarks, “to so great a latitude, that one may, without doing injury to mankind, affirm, that there is a greater distance between some Men, and others, in this respect, than between some Men and some Beasts. ’,80 Granting the possibil¬ ity that Locke refers here to the relatively small number of border cases, to “Lunaticks and Ideots” (7T 11.60) or to “Naturals” disabled from birth (ECHU 2.11.13; 3.6.22; also CU 6), we must yet come to terms with his observation that not only some, but “a great part of Mankind are, by the natural and unalterable State of Things in this World, and the Constitution of humane Affairs, unavoid¬ ably given over to invincible Ignorance of those Proofs” necessary to establish the “Propositions, that, in the Societies of Men, are judged of the greatest Moment” (4.20.2). Indeed, if those “who have fairly and truly examined, and are thereby got past doubt in all the Doctrines they profess, and govern themselves by ... are so few” as to number perhaps no more than one in one hundred (4.16.4; also 1.3.24, 25; CU 6, 24, 34), then it may seem that, according to Locke, the class of genuine persons or of truly self-possessing agents is hardly more extensive than the class of philosophers themselves. For his principles to be adequately endowed and thus defensible as naturebased rules of right, Locke must find the means for energizing the slothful, submissive majority while civilizing the domineering few, and likewise for en¬ lightening the less rational majority without doing injustice to the more rational few. Having shown, in the argument set forth in this chapter, what the errant, “busy-minded,” contentious beings of the state of nature must become in order to cure the ills of that state and achieve justice and happiness, it remains for Locke to show how they may achieve, or be brought to desire, their desirable end. This exposition of Lockean political rationality concludes with an examination of

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Locke’s account of the particular pedagogical conventions—the doctrines and institutions—whereby we are to acquire and cultivate our property in ourselves. Notes 1. Sargentich, “Locke and Ethical Theory,” 26. Cf. “Of Ethick in General,” in King, Life of John Locke, 308-11. 2. See the discussions in Colman, John Locke’s Moral Philosophy, 3, 48-49, 73, 17980, 193-95, and Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics, 150-61. 3. See especially Rawls, A Theory of Justice, section 77. 4. Theory of Justice, especially sections 64-68. 5. The right is prior to the good as “the self is prior to the ends that are affirmed by it”; it is an error characteristic of teleological doctrines to attempt “to give form to our life by first looking to the good independently defined” (Theory of Justice, section 84, 560). 6. Leviathan chap. 21, ed. MacPherson, 262 (emphasis original). 7. Nature and Politics, 126. 8. Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 6: “Pleasure therefore, (or Delight,) is the apparence, or sense of Good; and Molestation or Displeasure, the apparence, or sense of Evill” (MacPherson, 122). 9. Thus 2.21.29 of the first edition: “For the cause of every less degree of Pain, as well as every greater degree of Pleasure, has the nature of Good, and vice versa, and is that which determines our Choice, and challenges our Preference. Good then, the greater Good is that alone which determines the Will" (Nidditch, 250-51). 10. Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding, 144. Contrast the reading of Lamprecht, The Moral and Political Philosophy of John Locke, who finds in the first edition a statement of “the extreme hedonistic position, which discomfited Locke by its implication “that men were mere creatures swayed by the strongest pleasure . . . thus leaving no room for the guiding activity of reason” (112-15). Although this reading is less faithful to Locke’s own explanations of the revision than is Yolton’s, we shall see shortly that it too contains an important element of truth. 11. Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 184ff. 12. For this point, and for my more general discussion of Locke’s account of willing, I am most indebted to the discussion in Rapaczinski, Nature and Politics, 126-76. 13. John Locke’s Moral Philosophy, 215. 14. See the objection formulated by Locke’s contemporary John Jackman, for instance, at CJLtt2105, 6/20/1696. 15. Leviathan, chap. 8 (MacPherson, 139). 16. Reasoned Freedom, 40 and passim. Cf. Wood, The Politics of Locke’s Philosophy, 157-61; Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy, 200. 17. The significance of this claim was not lost on the vigilant Stillingfleet, in response to whose objections Locke disclaims any intention to argue that ‘herein chiefly lies the excellency of mankind above brutes that these cannot abstract and enlarge their ideas, as men do.’ He replies evasively (and condescendingly) that “the ability of mankind does not lie in the impotency or disabilities of brutes,” and he claims that he had suggested in the Essay that the power of abstraction constitutes only “one excellency of mankind above brutes” (Works 1823, 4.15). Locke does at one point in the Essay refer to the power of abstraction as merely “an Excellency” that the brutes do not possess, but his accompanying references to the “proper difference” and the “perfect distinction betwixt Man and Brutes”

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lend support to Stillingfleet’s reading. 18. Some critics charge that Locke mistakes the mere datum of personal identity, i.e., memory, for its constitutive element. For a thorough discussion of this objection, see Anthony Flew, “Locke and the Problem of Personal Identity,” in Locke and Berkeley, eds. C. B. Martin and D. M. Armstrong, especially 158-66. As Yolton observes, however, for Locke “this appropriating consciousness is not just memory” but is a property of a “being concerned for the deeds I have done, concerned for their happiness-producing, for their moral worth, for their importance in my intentional actions” [Locke: An Introduction (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 32]. Here as elsewhere, Locke’s suggestion of the fragility of our identities as persons underlines the human need to struggle to overcome the attractions of momentary indulgences and thus to unify one’s experiences into a single, coherent, well-governed life. In maintaining that “a concern for Happiness [is] the unavoid¬ able concomitant of consciousness” (2.27.26), Locke comes close to arguing that individ¬ uals possess unitary selves to the degree that they are concerned to possess unitary selves. To the degree that reason succeeds in governing our passionate pursuits, comments Pangle, “the self would seem to unify itself, to gather itself, to become more fully a self” (Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 268). 19. According to Neal Wood, in emphasizing the various environmental influences on or obstructions of reasoning, Locke advances the development of Bacon’s “embryonic ‘sociology of knowledge’ and conception of ‘ideology.’” Yet in contrast to other contempo¬ rary historicists, Wood recognizes that Locke’s conception of consciousness is essentially (and in Wood’s view, indefensibly) transhistorical (Politics of Locke’s Philosophy, 94-107, 157-63). 20. See also “Of Ethick in General,” in King, Life of John Locke, 311. 21. E.g., Dunn, Political Thought of John Locke, x; Tully, A Discourse on Property, x; Dworetz, 187-91. An exception is Huyler, Locke in America, who affirms both Locke’s theocentrism and his contemporary relevance. 22. See Pascal, Pensees III, aphorism 233. 23. This is the reading of Schouls, for instance, Reasoned Freedom, 136-38. 24. On the austerity of the strictly rational life for Locke, see Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 184-85. Those who find this reading implausible should consider further the unpublished fragment “Morality,” in which Locke draws the same parallel between the two premises discussed at ECHU 2.21.55, sketching the basis of a deductive morality suitable for those who have “noe prospect beyond this life” (in Sargentich, “Locke and Ethical Theory,” 26-28). Wootton, “John Locke: Socinian or Natural Law Theorist?”, properly wonders “what on earth Locke was doing trying to devise a deductive moral system for men ignorant [or skeptical] of divine sanctions” (66n50). Contrast Ashcraft, whose proper concern to refute MacPherson’s thesis of differential rights in Locke moves him to deny altogether the presence of different levels of rationality among human persons in Locke (Locke’s Two Treatises, 250-53). 25. See Tarcov: “Locke . . . equates reason with serious long-range considerations of interest” (Locke’s Education for Liberty, 149; also 104-06). 26. Leviathan, chap. 11, 161. 27. Pangle, Spirit of Modem Republicanism, 213, states this point most bluntly: “Locke ... has no doctrine of eros.” Cf. Rahe, Republics, 293-94, 499-500. On the Republic’s ironic, and therefore more moderate abstraction from eros, see Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 60-138. 28. Locke’s Education for Liberty, 210.

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29. See Dunn, Political Thought of John Locke, 259-65; Strauss, Natural Right and History, 249-51; on Locke’s alleged preoccupation with means, also Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 178-79, 207-08, 269. Cf. Tocqueville’s description of the restless¬ ness and anxiety prevalent among the Americans, whom he seems to regard as the world’s preeminent rational pursuers of happiness, and thus as the world’s preeminently Lockean people (Democracy in America 2.2.13). 30. On the problem of early modern liberalism and the theme of modern alienation in Rousseau, see especially Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man, ix-xiii, 15-85. 31. In King, Life of John Locke, 309. 32. Some currently available editions of this text have Locke affirming, not denying, that the true foundation of morality consists in societal necessity. Michael Rabieh points out, however, that in Locke’s personal, annotated copy of the Reasonableness and in the first eight editions of Locke’s works, the passage in question reads that the rules that necessity had introduced “stood not on their true foundations.” See “The Reasonableness of Locke, or the Unreasonableness of Christianity,” 943n9. 33. John Locke’s Liberalism, 203. Judith Shklar endorses a similar understanding of the task of liberal political theory in her account of the principle of “putting cruelty first” among the vices that civilized societies must restrain. See Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), especially chaps. 1, 6. 34. In Sargentich, “Locke and Ethical Theory,” 27-28. Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty, 183, comments more generally that the insight “that there are more and stronger men in the world than oneself’ is fundamental to the Lockean virtues. Cf. Hobbes’s defense of the principle of equality (Leviathan, chaps. 13, 15, in MacPerson, 183, 211). 35. See especially the statements of this view by Callicles, in Plato’s Gorgias, 482-92; by Glaucon, at Republic 358b-362c; and by Philus, summarizing the teaching of Carneades, in Cicero, Republic 3.5-21. 36. Hiram Caton, “Toward a Diagnosis of Progress,” Independent Journal of Philos¬ ophy 4 (1983): 8. 37. See the close of Leviathan, chap. 18, where Hobbes responds to the objection that the condition of subjects in his rational commonwealth may be miserable by imploring his readers to consider “the estate of Man can never be without some incommodity or other; and that the greatest, that in any forme of Government can possibly happen to the people in generall, is scarce sensible, in respect of the miseries, and horrible calamities, that accompany a Civill Warre; or that dissolute condition of masterlesse men, without subjec¬ tion to Lawes, and a coercive Power to tye their hands from rapine, and revenge” (MacPherson, 238). 38. Cf. Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 3: “And truly it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and always, when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed” (Mansfield, 14-15). 39. Montaigne, “Of experience,” in Essays, edited and translated by Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), 856. Cf. ECHU 4.18.11. 40. See also “Of Study,” in Axtell, Locke’s Educational Writings, 419-20. Contrast my reading of this passage and Locke’s concept of mediocrity with that of Ashcraft, Locke’s Two Treatises, 237. 41. New Organon, Book 1, aphorism 3. 42. Cf. “de Arte Medica,” in Fox Bourne, Life of John Locke, 1.222-27. 43. “Of the education of children,” in .Essays, 1.26 (Frame, 118, 120, 117). 44. Cf. the distinction in Leviathan, chap. 6, between “Pleasures of Sense” and “Plea¬ sures of the Mind”; also Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 179.

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45. Essays 1.14, “That the taste of good and evil depends in large part on the opinion we have of them,” in Frame, 39. 46. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 250-51. 47. “Thus I Think,” in King, Life of John Locke, 307. 48. “Thus I Think,” in King, Life of John Locke, 306; Works 1823, 6.548. 49. Cf. Tarcov, Locke's Education for Liberty, 116-17. 50. In a 1676 journal entry, Locke observes that love “is a sympathy of the soul and is nothing but the union of the mind with the idea of something that has a secret faculty to delight it” [in John Locke: Essays on the Law of Nature, ed. Wolfgang Von Leyden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 267], 51. In the unpublished fragment “Ethica 92,” Locke explains parental love as one of the pleasures of the mind, which “are the greatest as well as most lasting” pleasures. “Who ever was soe bruitish as would not quit the greatest sensual pleasure to save a childs life whom he loved. What is this but pleasure of thought remote from any sensual delight” (in Sargentich, “Locke and Ethical Theory,” 30). 52. A young Locke writes, for instance, in a draft letter to an unnamed “Madam”: “To catch the eyes of forward gazers, or by degrees to fire a heart that courts its flames is the effect of an ordinary face . . . But M. to Captivate at a distance and takeing a heart (that supposed it self well fortified) without either surprise or seige is the priviledg only of your beauty which scorns to conquer ordinary ways . . . thinke it not strange that you finde at your feet an unknowne captive, who may be permitted to submitt to a passion hee had noe means left him to resist and can noe more conceale then those flames that comeing from heaven are more violent then others and seldome burne slow or secreatly” (CJL #45, date unknown [de Beer estimates 1658 or 1659]). As for his later years, Locke’s lengthy and somewhat mysterious relationship with Damaris Cudworth, later the Lady Masham, has fueled speculations of varying degrees of politeness among his contemporaries and others; see the discussions in Cranston, John Locke, 215-24, 236, 335-36, and Yolton, Locke: An Introduction, 8-10. 53. See the discussion of the Lockean family in chapter six. 54. In Von Leyden, John Locke: Essays on the Law of Nature, 266. 55. In Axtell, Educational Writings, 113. 56. See also #3088A, 2/10/1702, to William Popple: “When necessarys are provided for, friendship is the best, most usefull, and most delightfull treasure that I know.” 57. Quoted in Patrick Kelly, “Locke and Molyneux: the anatomy of a friendship,” Hermathena 126 (Summer 1977): 43 (emphasis supplied). 58. Quoted in Cranston, John Locke, 441. For a more detailed account of Locke’s friendship with Molyneux, see Kelly, “Locke and Molyneux,” 38-54. 59. Contrast MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, especially 231ff.; Neal Wood, The Politics of Locke’s Philosophy, 34, 135-48, 156-61; Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics, 117, 172-76; and Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 16869. 60. Cf. Mehta, The Anxiety of Freedom, 6, 119-67. 61. Essaysl.2%, “Offriendship,” Frame, 141, 143, 140. 62. Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 274-75, 270 (emphasis supplied). The same ambivalence appears in Rahe, Republics', cf. 456-57, 499-500 with 1005nl9. 63. Pangle’s observation concerning Locke’s account of money, whose ambiguous status (it “is and is not the end”) is “of the essence of Locke’s thought, and is essential to the way of life and outlook he cultivates” (167), applies still more aptly, I believe, to the status of rationality in Locke’s thought.

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64. Cf. Plato, Republic 432b; Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty, 172. 65. Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 269. 66. “Continuall successe in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desireth, is that men call FELICITY” [Leviathan chap. 6 (MacPherson, 129; cf. chap. 11, 161)]. 67. “Of experience,” in Essays, Frame, 852. Cf. Plato, Phaedo 90c, 96a; also the discussion of the dangers of misology and misanthropy that arise from an excessive faith in the power of philosophy to apprehend the causes of all things, in Lampert, Nietzsche and Modern Tunes, 132-35. 68. Essays, 1.30, “Of moderation”; III. 13, “Of experience,” 851-52; 1.19, “That our happiness must not be judged until after our death,” 55; 1.14, “That the taste of good and evil depends in large part on the opinion we have of them,” 37; 1.26, “Of the education of children,” 117. See also 1.20, “That to philosophize is to learn to die,” passim. 69. An example of the requisite severity appears in Locke’s now infamous recommen¬ dations for the reform of the “poor laws,” the primary purpose of which, whatever else one might say of them, is clearly pedagogical, not punitive. The text of these recommen¬ dations appears in H. R. Fox Bourne, Life of John Locke, 1.377-91. 70. The Spirit of the Laws, 13.2 (trans. Cohler, Miller, and Stone). On the relation between Montesquieu and Locke on this important point, contrast Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 241, 329-30n26. 71. See the similar argument of Robert Boyle, Some Considerations Regarding the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy, cited in Rahe, Republics, 361. See also Machiavelli, The Prince chap. 26. I thank Professor Rich Dougherty for drawing my attention to the latter relation. 72. In the letter to Grenville that culminates in his description of the “mediocrity” of the human condition, Locke declares: “I cannot imagin that God who has compassion on our weaknesses and knows how we are made, would put pore man . . . under an absolute necessity of sinning perpetually against him, which will almost inevitably follow if there be noe latitude alowed us in the occurrences of our lives. ... I cannot conceive it to be the designe of god ... to clog every action of our lives . . . with infinite Consideration before we begin it and unavoidable perplexity and doubt when it is donne. ... If we were never to doe but what is absolutely the best all our lives would goe away in deliberation and we should never come to action” (CJL #374, 3/13/1678). 73. For an illuminating expression of such a posture of closure, see Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” in McLellan, Karl Marx: Selected Writings, 94-95. See also Eric Voegelin’s commentary, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1968), 23-28, 44-45. 74. See Montaigne, “Of diversion,” in Essays, III.4 (Frame, 630-38), and the discussion in Schaefer, Political Philosophy of Montaigne, 305-11. 75. Locke appears to reveal something of this attitude toward his own political activity as he expresses to his friend Edward Clarke the hope that “the zeale and forwardness of you your selves [the House of Commons] makes it needlesse for us without dores soe much as to thinke of the publique which is the happyest state a country can be in, when those whose businesse it is, take such care of affairs that all others quietly and with resignation acquiesce and thinke it superfluous and impertinent to medle or beat their heads about them” (CJL #1326, 10/17/1690). Cf. Jefferson to Madison, 6/9/1793, in The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, eds. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York: Modern Library, 1944), 523-24. 76. Zuckert, Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, 276-87.

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77. Rapaczynski observes that Locke attempts “to synthesize praxis and poesis in a unified theory of human activity” (.Nature and Politics, 117). 78. The Prince chap. 9 (Mansfield, 39). In the extreme desire for preservation Locke appears to observe a greater natural submissiveness than does Machiavelli in the popular “humor.” In virtually the same breath in which he declares that “the people generally ill treated, and contrary to right, will be ready on any occasion to ease themselves of a burden that sits heavy upon them,” Locke concedes that people in general “are hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledg’d Faults, in the Frame they have been accustom’d to” (11.224, 223; also 230; cf. 11.91-93; 1.33, and more generally ECHU 1.3.23-27; 2.33.6-7; STCE 146, 164; CU 34, 41). 79. Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, 6/24/1826, in Life and Selected Writings, 729. 80. See Montaigne, “Of the inequality that is between us,” Essays 1.42, Frame, 189.

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Chapter Six

Locke’s Constitutional Design To introduce his defense of the proposed U.S. Constitution, Publius remarks famously that it has fallen upon the American people “to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” Thus what is presented as a self-evident truth in the Declaration of Independence—the natural right to government by consent, to direct or indirect self-government—appears in The Federalist as a question whose answer depends upon the outcome of a consti¬ tutional experiment.1 As in much else, in this movement from axiomatic assertions to more epistemologically cautious and, in some respects, more politically prudent acknowledgments of the experimental status of the doctrines of natural rights and consensual government, the founders of the American Republic show themselves to be followers of Locke. To state it in the language of his Baconian, naturalhistorical conception of science, Locke understands the principles of justice as hypotheses, derived from but as yet inconclusively verified by historical data. The experimentalism that readers commonly find in the Essay is present as well in Locke’s more directly political works.2 However dogmatically he may sometimes present it, Locke’s constitutionalism represents a proposal for a momentous experiment whose purpose is to identify the conditions under which human beings in general can manifest the “power” or faculty of rational self-government. To recover Locke’s understanding of the conventions instrumental to the cultivation of jural rationality, in the discussion that follows I employ the concept of constitutionalism more broadly than is usual in discussions of liberal political thought. I understand Locke’s constitutionalism to include not only his definitions 179

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and distributions of governmental powers but also the institutions and associations of “civil society” within which individuals live much of their private lives, and the doctrines that inform those institutions and associations. To some degree, I assimi¬ late constitution to regime, conceiving of the Lockean constitution as a more-orless comprehensive moral-political order. I am aware that this usage may seem alien to the spirit of Locke and of political liberalism more generally, so far as it blurs the boundary between politics and moral education whose clarification liberals commonly count among the distinctive achievements of their creed. Clearly, in presenting his teaching in separate political, philosophical, educational, and theological compartments; in his decentralizing assignment of the task of moral education to private families; in conceiving of political laws as “fences” functioning primarily to protect the rights of presumptively pre-formed persons; and above all in insisting that the care of the soul is beyond the purview of politi¬ cal authority, Locke displays a classically liberal mistrust of centralized, institu¬ tionalized claims of comprehensive moral wisdom. One cannot doubt Locke’s intention to limit the activities of government in the formation of moral character. One may acknowledge all this, however, and yet preserve a significant distinction between Locke’s liberalism and later forms that adopt a neutralist, “let-a-hundredflowers-bloom” approach to the relation of politics and moral education.3 Possessing a clear awareness of the qualities of character required to sustain a regime of liberal governance, Locke effects no doctrinaire separation of politics from moral education. As “Habits have powerful charms,” moral education for Locke is largely a matter of properly habituating body and mind (ECHU 2.21.69; cf. STCE 10, 42, 64-66, 110; CU 6); and its task of strengthening the subrational supports of reason cannot be confined to the years of minority. So far as the possibility of liberal government is ultimately contingent upon the performance of the morally formative institutions of civil society, liberal government holds a proper interest in shaping, promoting, and sustaining those institutions, and in reinforcing their teachings through its own forms and actions. My purpose in this chapter is to show how the institutions and doctrines essential to Locke’s political thought—the doctrines of reasonable Christianity and of individual rights, the institutions of private property, the family, consensual and representative govern¬ ment, and even the enterprise of science—are designed to function as parts of a coherent constitutional-pedagogical regime. They represent works of philosophical legislation, performing the underlaborer’s task of ameliorating the disorders of the state of nature and, in some cases, the more affirmative task of promoting our achievement of the genuine happiness of rational self-possession.

Reasonable Christianity “I esteem it above all things necessary,” declares Locke in what may be consid¬ ered the founding document of modem political liberalism, “to distinguish exactly the Business of Civil Government from that of Religion, and to settle the just Bounds that lie between the one and the other” (LCT, 26). In Locke’s design, the

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settlement of the boundary demarcating this most fundamental distribution of powers promises to benefit both religion and civil government. It will benefit religion by purifying believers’ motives for assent, and it will advance the cause of civil government by removing a powerful cause of faction from public life. But Locke’s distinction of the business of government from that of religion does not entail a strict separation, as his willingness to penalize atheism and to accept noncoercive religious establishments indicates. Alongside his determination to depoliticize sectarian differences, Locke, unlike some influential present-day liberals, maintains an appreciation of the pedagogical power of religion properly conceived. Affirming that civil government derives its legitimacy from no other source than the rational consent of the governed, Locke acknowledges also the common imperfection of human rationality. From that imperfection he infers not the futility of the cause of rational self-government, but only its ordinary depend¬ ence upon extrarational supports. Proclaiming the greatest part’s invincible igno¬ rance of the grounds of moral demonstrations, Locke yet reassures us that “GOD has furnished Men with Faculties sufficient to direct them in the Way they should take, if they will but seriously employ them that Way.” In particular, “No Man is so wholly taken up with the Attendance on the means of Living, as to have no spare Time at all to think of his Soul, and inform himself in Matters of Religion” (ECHU 4.20.2-3; cf. RC 243). The appeal to faith is not an alternative to rational self-government, but a condition of its success. Although intolerance in the name of religion often enervates and enslaves the understanding, it is religion rightly conceived that “in effect. . . should most distinguish us from Beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational Creatures, above Brutes” (4.18.11). In Locke’s constitutional design, it falls mainly upon the Christian religion to make religion’s vital contribution to society’s moral and political health. In this, as in his adoption of English institutions to supply the model of a rationally consti¬ tuted government, Locke makes use of the materials at hand, without thereby exposing himself to a charge of intellectual slavishness or parochialism.4 As we saw in chapter two, Locke implores his readers to subject the claims of Christian¬ ity to rational scrutiny, and he himself affirms the truth of Christianity as judged by the criterion of its moral reasonableness. Happily, then, Locke finds that, rightly interpreted, the religion prevailing in England and throughout the western world is especially well suited to perform the proper function of religion in a well ordered political society. The true, reasonable Christianity lends vital support to the cause of civil government by taming the passions that obstruct the exercise of reason, while energizing the passions that support it. It functions most usefully to moderate the polar passions that divide human beings, fostering a love of peace while sustaining the spirit of rational liberty that makes peace choiceworthy. Pacific Christianity As he indicates in the Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke is fully prepared for the objection that the historical practice of Christianity hardly shows it to be

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a pacific religion. Against the contention that Christian sects are not entitled to toleration because they themselves are intolerant, “inclinable to Factions, Tu¬ mults, and Civil Wars,” he maintains that the intolerance that has provoked such hostilities is not intrinsic to Christianity, but is instead bom of the “Avarice and insatiable desire of Dominion” of church leaders. Locke’s vigorous attacks on the motives of clerics may seem themselves ad hominem and inconsistent with the spirit of Christian charity that he urges upon his brethren. He finds their justifica¬ tion, however, in his reading of the Christian religion itself, which forecloses other explanations of sectarian intolerance. Although the doctrine of justification by faith lends itself to abuses, Christianity rightly understood yet “carries the greatest opposition to Covetousness, Ambition, Discord, Contention, and all manner of inordinate Desires; and is the most modest and peaceable Religion that ever was.”5 Whoever “pretends to be a Successor of the Apostles ... is obliged to admonish his Hearers of the Duties of Peace, and Good-will towards all men; as well towards the Erroneous as the Orthodox” (54-55, 33-34; also 23-26; cf. Works 1823, 7.376).6 Properly understood, Christianity serves to counter partisan divisiveness in the form not only of intra-Christian sectarian differences but also of the psychological class divisions that contribute more generally to the distur¬ bances of the state of nature. In large part, the key to the pacific, antisectarian character of Christianity, as Locke argues in the Reasonableness, lies in its doctrinal simplicity. The design of the gospel appears in the choice of its apostles as “a company of poor, ignorant, illiterate men.” Without necessarily excluding anyone, it was designed especially “for the instruction of the illiterate bulk of mankind in the way of salvation.” If the poor and the laboring were meant to receive the gospel, Locke reasons, “it was, without a doubt, such a gospel as the poor could understand—plain and intelligible” (141, 1, 252). The true, simple, reasonable Christianity places only two conditions upon God’s bestowal of eternal life: “faith and repentance, i.e., believing Jesus to be the Messiah and a good life” (172). These two conditions are well designed not only to facilitate common comprehension, but also to minimize fundamental division and to maximize Christian inclusiveness. With respect to the single article of faith, Locke’s careful formulations appear intended to appease the common human desire for “bottoming” principles, while preserving a vital inde¬ terminacy as to the meaning of a belief in Jesus as the “Messiah.”7 The breadth of this condition removes the urgency from disputes over the unity or trinity of God or the divinity of Christ, offering doctrinal justification even to those who conceive of Jesus as no more than a divinely commissioned moral teacher. By thus rendering virtually all doctrinal and liturgical issues indifferent to the ultimate end of salvation, Locke’s reasonable Christianity places most of the real burden of justification on the condition of practical repentance, or fidelity to the law of works. The gospel in its pragmatic simplicity teaches that Jesus will “pass sen¬ tence on all men, according to their deeds” (252; also 6, 222, 227). Again, Locke teaches that the true, Christian God is concerned with ends or effects more than with forms. Not refined doctrinal orthodoxy, but rather “Morality” carries our

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supreme interest in eternal life (ECHU 4.12.11). And in keeping with the simplic¬ ity of “the law of faith, ” the moral or good life required by the law of works is itself identical with the simple moral rule accessible to unassisted reason, namely, the rational pursuit of happiness. In like manner, Locke holds that Christianity reasonably interpreted blunts the psychological class divisions that contribute so much to our natural belligerence. Pursuing the suggestion of Bacon, Locke holds that the Christian virtue of charity in particular can appeal to the ambitious and potentially tyrannical, even as it places them in the service of egalitarian ends (see TT 1.42-3; ECHU 4.12.12).8 Further, while it provides an outlet for the gratification of legitimate ambitions, Locke s reasonable Christianity withholds support for the expression of illegiti¬ mate ambitions. Here again the simplicity of the Christian faith plays a part, as does its nonlegalistic character. To foreclose clerical mystifications, the laws and doctrines of churches must remain rooted in the simple tenets of the true faith, just as to avoid corruption by “the Phansies and intricate Contrivances of Men,” municipal laws must derive from the simple laws or rules of natural justice (TT n. 12). As it makes accessible the word of God, unmediated by any priestly elite, to learned and unlearned alike; and as, in contrast to Biblical Judaism, “there is absolutely no such thing, under the Gospel, as a Christian Commonwealth,” Christianity supplies no proper cover for the ambition to rule (LCT, 44). Yet more is required to establish the pacific, reasonable character of the Christian religion. Locke’s arguments for a relatively nonpolitical, nonsectarian Christianity remain incomplete, absent a consideration of Christianity’s relation to other forms of belief as well as to rationalist nonbelief. The question of the limits of Christian inclusiveness or tolerance with respect to other faiths derives much of its force from a more general tension between the principle of tolerance and any notion of positive divine revelation. First, given the impossibility of establishing the historical veracity of any claim to divine positive revelation, Locke’s concerns about the dangers inherent in claims of immediate revelation would seem to apply to claims of revelation in general: “the Love of something extraordinary, the Ease and Glory it is to be inspired and be above the common and natural ways Knowledge so flatters many Men’s Laziness, Igno¬ rance, and Vanity, that. . . Reason is lost upon them, they are above it” (4.19.8). Locke’s affirmations of Christianity as the one, true revelation do not negate this concern. Even if, as Locke maintains, Christianity provides no sanction for the development of its own priestly elite, the very claim of revelation, as the ultimate form of providedness and the ultimate source of distinction among human beings, yet threatens to render the whole of Christendom itself a priestly elite in relation to outsiders.9 This difficulty may proceed from charitable as well as from selfregarding motives. If belief in Jesus as the Messiah is indeed a necessary condition of salvation, according to Locke, then one must question the ability of even reasonable, Lockean Christians to live together, in civic concord, with others whose souls they believe to be in mortal peril.

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Undaunted by such apparent difficulties, Locke insists as a matter of Christian tolerance that “neither Pagan, nor Muhumetan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the Civil Rights of the Commonwealth, because of his Religion” (LCT, 54, also 31; Works 1823, 6.229-30). While error in religion may be a grave misfor¬ tune for those who embrace it, it does no injury to the temporal or spiritual well¬ being of others. The inegalitarianism inherent in the Christian or any positive revelation can be contained within the private sphere. This does not mean that Locke counsels indifference to the spiritual fate of one’s fellow members of society. It is “indeed the greatest duty of a Christian,” and by implication of all persons, to supply “charitable Admonitions, and affectionate Endeavours to reduce Men from Errors.” Compulsion or force alone is to be forbom. Still, at the end of the day, the most charitable and persuasive believers must accept the fact that as some of their fellows will neglect their bodily health or their estates, some too will neglect their souls (LCT, 31, 47, 35). The concern may therefore arise that such tolerance entails a certain coolness or moral distance in our regard for our fellows, weakening our own sense of moral obligation and with it the bonds of society. To such a concern, Locke might respond that in its net effect, a certain degree of moral distance in matters spiritual as well as secular is actually benefi¬ cial to society. We have seen that a powerful mental and emotional neediness constitutes a major source of disorder in the state of nature, commonly obstructing the development and exercise of reason. In the Second Treatise in particular, Locke’s concern that this neediness may fuel an irrational communitarianism, marked by an excessive affection for our fellows and an uncritical reification of society and societal authority, explains his striking deemphasis of political societ¬ ies’ need for friendship or affectional bonds among their members (13, 70, 107). If the principle of tolerance in religion further strengthens our resistance against irrational communitarianism, so much the better. However that may be, Locke’s claim that error in religion effects only a private or personal harm invites further consideration. Underlying this claim is the supposition of a society composed of responsible adults, each possessing in the power of critical reason a sufficient capacity to ward off error. It seems significant that in the Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke pays virtually no attention to the condition of children. He displays no concern at the possibility that exposure to beliefs that are harmless to our individual selves may yet be harmful to our ex¬ tended selves, or to our imperfectly rational offspring, for whose moral and spiritual education we are responsible. But to shelter children from religious error or heterodoxy in a society whose public, constitutional ethos incorporates the principle of religious toleration would appear to be at least as difficult a task as sheltering them from the superstitions and other vices of house servants (STCE 59, 68, 70, 76, 138, 191). Locke seems similarly unconcerned about the potential danger posed by interfaith friendship in a tolerant society. Although he denies that friendship is simply necessary to societal cohesiveness, he surely recognizes the likelihood that the members of a tolerant society will form friendships outside their particular faiths. But if, as Rousseau observes, it is impossible to love those whom

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one believes to be damned,10 then the formation of such friendships would seem to require a renunciation of the faith whereby one believes them to be damned, and perhaps even a renunciation of the god who would condemn them. In these indirect ways, it would seem that by facilitating the coexistence of members of a variety of faiths, the tolerant society itself poses a danger to the integrity of each particular faith. The real solution of the problem of revelation, as well as the source of Locke’s unconcern about the effects of religious toleration on the integrity of faith, lies in the most profound and potentially problematic aspect of Locke’s understanding of Christianity’s reasonableness. The Christian revelation avoids the inegalitarian divisiveness that may seem inherent in any particular positive revelation by hold¬ ing forth an egalitarian, virtually universal promise of salvation. Christian believ¬ ers need not fear association with adherents of other faiths, Locke implies, be¬ cause the good and just God of Christianity would not punish those who worship him sincerely in another faith. With respect to those who lived prior to the coming of Christ, Locke maintains that “Nobody was, or can be required to believe, what was never proposed to him to believe.” As for those among the rest of mankind since the time of Christ, who have not heard of the Christian promise, Locke declares more generally that “God will require of every man ‘according to what a man hath, and not according to what he hath not. ’” This qualification may seem to allow for some degree of intolerance toward those who have heard of the Christian revelation yet espouse other beliefs.11 Yet Locke proceeds to observe that Islamic monotheism derives directly from Christian monotheism, tacitly suggesting the possibility that sincere worship from within the Muslim faith is acceptable to the one, true God. Shortly thereafter, he moves still closer to an open denial that the true, reasonable Christianity requires a specific profession of Christian faith, in any traditionally recognizable manner, as a condition of salva¬ tion: after the coming of Christ, “Praises and prayer, humbly offered up to the Deity, were the worship he now demanded, and in these everyone was to look after his own heart, and to know that it was that alone which God had regard to and accepted” (RC 228, 231, 239, 244; cf. ECHU 3.9.23). One may question how this trans-Christian inclusiveness coheres with the doctrine that “Jesus is the only true Messiah, neither is there any other person, but he, given to be a mediator between God and man, in whose name we may ask and hope for salvation. ” Having affirmed that those who lived before Christ could fmd the way to salvation by “the light of nature,” Locke himself more pointedly raises a closely related question: “What advantage have we by Jesus Christ?” (RC 23234). He replies that the Christian revelation was needed to discover to most minds “the one only true God”; to supply complete knowledge of, and lend authority to, morality; to reform practices of worship by spiritualizing them; to supply adequate motives for virtuous living; and to promise assistance to humankind in the difficult struggle to observe the dictates of virtue and true religion (239-46). Although it may have been and may yet be within the unassisted abilities of a few gifted individuals to locate the path to salvation, the true morality could never have

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received widespread acknowledgment, let alone become effective, absent the Christian revelation. Thus “many are beholden to revelation, who do not acknowl¬ edge it. . . . [It] is our mistake to think, that because reason confirms [revealed truths] to us, we had the first certain knowledge of them from thence; and in that clear evidence we now possess them” (243).12 As Locke presents it, Christianity is the revelation that overcomes the exclu¬ sivity of revelation, subsuming or comprehending other revelations, natural as well as positive. Against the objection that his reasonable interpretation would yield a diluted or self-undermining Christianity, paradoxically ascribing to Chris¬ tianity the doctrine that one need be only sincere, not necessarily Christian, to qualify for salvation,13 Locke implies that the inclusive promise of salvation represents rather the fulfillment of the Christian promise. He implies that without doing violence to their particular professions of faith, all or virtually all those who honor the wisdom and goodness of the one God and affirm the salvation of the just, may and should reflect on the degree to which, in their lives and core beliefs, they already tacitly honor Jesus as the Messiah, the King of Kings. By means of his reasonable interpretation, Locke invites into the fold not only high-church Anglicans and Unitarians, but even, implicitly, the likes of Muslims and Deists. All may be generously considered Christians, in their fundamental beholdenness to the Christian revelation.14 Thus the true, reasonable Christianity as Locke conceives of it defuses the danger of imperialism inherent in its universalism. It incorporates the tolerance and inclusiveness of natural religion, while preserving at least in its external forms the integrity and authority of positive revelation.

Christianity and Rational Liberty Locke holds that Christianity not only refrains from flattering the domineering and divisive passions but also helps correct the more common human vice of submissiveness, preparing its adherents for a life of rational liberty. This is one desirable implication of his insistence, against the doctrine of apostolic succession, that a church is nothing more than “a voluntary Society of Men, joining them¬ selves together of their own accord, in order to the publick worshipping of God, in such a manner as they judge acceptable to him” (LCT, 28). For many people, the church will stand as the representative of ultimate authority, and as a model for other forms of authority. By demystifying clerical authority, Locke’s under¬ standing of Christian churches as voluntary societies should therefore foster a more critical attitude toward political authority as well. Those who believe that their clerical officers derive their authority from the reasoned consent of church members are not likely to believe that political authority derives from any other, higher source than the rational consent of the governed. Moreover, so far as the toleration of religious differences is not only “agreeable to the Gospel of Jesus Christ” but positively required by it, the true Christianity will have the effect of marshalling religious opinion and sentiment in defense of the cause of constitu¬ tional, limited government: “the several separate Congregations, like so many

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Guardians of the Publick Peace, will watch one another, that nothing may be innovated or changed in the Form of the Government” (LCT, 25, 53).15 Christianity, as Locke reads it, promotes the cause of rational liberty in much more profound respects as well. For those for whom the authority of the church stands as a model for other forms of authority, the authority of God himself must stand as the ultimate model. As Hobbes understood, the notion that God’s author¬ ity derives simply from his omnipotence—that divine might makes divine right—is most likely to condition believers to accept the analogous identification of the true basis of political authority.16 Viewed from the perspective of a devotion to free government, a happy consequence of Locke’s reasonable Christianity, by contrast, is its mitigation of the potentially severe implications of God’s omnipotence. Acknowledging that God as our omnipotent creator holds an absolute, arbitrary power to command his creatures (7T 1.52-53, II.6; ECHU 2.28.8; 4.13.3), Locke argues nonetheless that God must not be understood as simply beyond good and evil.17 By insisting that any morally sound Biblical interpretation or reasoning about God must build upon an affirmation of God’s goodness, wisdom, and justice, Locke implies that the ultimate authority to which human beings are subject cannot be understood to hold absolute and arbitrary power over us. By teaching us to interpret God’s commands in accordance with our understanding of his fundamental goodness and justice, Locke teaches that even or especially divine authority is limited by the criteria of reasonableness. We are to regard goodness and justice as essential to the legitimacy of any ruling power, divine or human. In Locke’s Biblical exegesis, the most striking application of this interpretive principle lies in his explanation of Adam’s fall. One crucial misconception of the Fall, Locke alleges, concerns the recipient of the divine punishment. Especially in Romans 5:12 (‘By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin’), and I Corinthians 15:22 (‘In Adam all die’), many find the basis of the doctrine of original sin, according to which Adam’s transgression stains not only himself but also his entire posterity. This doctrine raises “the common objection that so many stumble at” and that proceeds precisely from Locke’s standard for judging the reasonableness of Christianity: “‘How doth it consist with the justice and goodness of God, that the posterity of Adam should suffer for his sin, the innocent be punished for the guilty?”’ Locke’s plain and simple answer is that it does not. It is a “strange” and “mistaken” interpretation of the New Testament to suppose “the righteous God ... as a punishment of one sin ... to put man under the necessity of sinning continually, and so multiplying the provocation. ” As a righ¬ teous God, the Christian God rewards just and moral conduct, takes nothing to which we have a right, and charges “every one’s sin . . . upon himself only.” Because Adam was “bom” in paradise, Locke reasons, his banishment from it can properly be construed as a punishment. Likewise, the unrighteous among Adam’s posterity are punished for their individual acts of unrighteousness by their exclu¬ sion from immortal paradise. But the birth of all Adam’s posterity outside paradise and into a condition of mortality deprives us of nothing to which we are entitled, and so constitutes simply a gift, not a punishment (RC 2, 4, 6-11).

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This heterodox reading of the Fall carries profound significance for the cause of rational liberty. From Locke’s contention that the mortality as well as the manifold other unhappinesses of fallen humankind represents merely a condition of birth, not a divine punishment, it follows that we are not obliged simply to suffer our condition or its attendant ills. Although Locke, unlike Descartes, declines to speculate on the possibility of overcoming mortality itself through advances in medical science,18 he clearly affirms that a profound amelioration of the laborious character of the human condition is a moral as well as practical possibility. With respect to the paradigmatic form of labor, for instance, Locke declares that nothing in the Bible obliges a woman to “bring forth her Children in Sorrow and Pain, if there could be found a remedy for it” (7T 1.47).19 As the wisdom of “our infinitely wise Creator” is manifest in “Nature,” which “never makes excellent things, for mean or no uses” (ECHU 2.1.15), God not only allows but indeed intends us to use our faculties to better our condition. God gives us a rule suitable to our rational nature, a rule “that cannot be otherwise than what reason should dictate” (RC 14, 252). Ultimately, God’s wisdom and justice are manifest in a regime of liberal governance. As God knows our frailty and respects our rational liberty, “Mankind . . . are, and must be allowed to pursue their happiness, nay, cannot be hindered” (ECHU 2.21.53; RC 245; also 243). In stark contrast, therefore, to the Christianity denounced by Machiavelli and by its pagan adversaries as fit for slaves, Locke’s true, reasonable Christianity is not a religion of suffering, quiescence, or passivity. Rather, it conforms essen¬ tially with his assertion in the Essay that “Action," the active amelioration of one’s own and one’s fellows’ estates, is “the great Business of Mankind” (2.22.10, emphasis supplied; also 4.12.11). Christianity rightly understood constitutes no hindrance, but instead accommodates and even encourages assertions of human agency. Notwithstanding his references to the abundance in which God places humankind, Locke maintains that “God commanded Man also to labour” to improve the earth, “and the penury of his condition required it of him” (7T 11.32). This may seem, however, a peculiar mode of obligation.20 Locke denies both that God places us in a natural condition of abundance, and thus obliges our gratitude, and that the natural condition of penury represents a divine punishment that we are obliged to suffer in consequence of our inexpiable guilt. The obligation not to suffer, but instead actively to improve our condition may seem peculiar, therefore, in view of its close conformity with our earthly happiness rationally conceived. It may seem that the true import of this “command” is to signify Locke’s rejection of the opinion that under Christianity, the divine donation imposes any genuine obligation upon humankind. The significance of this issue can be stated in more pointed terms. If God’s provision for Adam’s posterity is as penurious as Locke sometimes describes it, and yet represents no divine punishment for human sinning, then the liberalism or liberality that Locke seems to ascribe to the Christian God comes into question. As several commentators observe, to question the status of God’s liberalism as a giver or provider is to question God’s benevolence toward, and by implication, his

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title to authority over, his human creatures. At issue here, ultimately, is whether Locke’s moral and political thought rests upon a premise of divine ownership or human self-ownership (cf. 7TII.6, 56, with 27, 44, 123). In the view of some of his more suspicious or philosophically probing commentators, however indirect his rhetoric, Locke’s emphasis of human agency and responsibility ultimately entails a call for a liberationist revolt, resting upon an exposure of the indifference and effective hostility of God toward humankind. Carried through to its extreme, such an assertion of radical human autonomy would signify man’s final triumph over nature or the natural condition, and indeed over any source of moral order external to the human will.21 One cannot deny that Locke provides some basis for such suspicions. Yet in the final analysis, the logic of his argument does not compel us to ascribe to him a radically antitheological animus. The argument elaborated in the preceding chapter affirming nature’s ultimate beneficence provides equal support for the affirmation of the beneficence of God. To overcome the dangerous errancy of our common responses, we must understand the uneasiness that proceeds from the natural condition’s unprovidedness as salutary, supplying an indispensable motive for rational action. That God provides only the “materials of Plenty” and the faculties to make it actual does not mean that God acts arbitrarily or negligently toward humankind. Nor is the assertion of human self-ownership that Locke recommends and finds Scriptural support for necessarily inconsistent with divine ownership.22 To the contrary, serving as the model for wise parents and govern¬ ments, God exercises the prerogatives of ownership sternly but liberally, allowing and directing his rational creatures in large measure to govern themselves. By stocking the natural provision with things that spoil, God avoids spoiling us. He teaches industry, foresight, and responsibility by requiring us to make for our¬ selves the things that we need and enjoy. More generally, by providing for us the materials of rational liberty and the responsibility for developing them—by provid¬ ing for us in a manner respectful of our property in ourselves—the Christian God reveals himself once again to be a generous, liberal, reasonable God.23 The most profound manifestation of this divine respect and concern for human self-possession appears in God’s providence concerning the afterlife. We recall Locke’s concern at the mentally destabilizing power of the awareness of mortality, and that he recommends in response not the simple conquest of the fear of mortal¬ ity and desire for immortality, but rather their moderate appeasement. The rebel¬ liousness implicit in his observation concerning mortality in his manuscript on the laws of nature admits of this qualification: a being concerned for human happiness would not have created us with an awareness of mortality, unless he also gave us cause to put aside our fears or enabled us to develop sufficient fortitude to thrive in the face of the ultimate contingency of our existence. The preceding chapter emphasized the fortitude that Locke recommends for the few most austerely rational among his readers. To benefit the generality of his audience, however, Locke seeks to show how Christianity allays the fear of death, appeasing while lending rational stability to our hope for a joyful afterlife.

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Locke shows in part how Christianity allays the disordering fear of death, as he corrects what he considers another widespread misconception, this one con¬ cerning the nature of Adam’s punishment for his original transgression. Comment¬ ing upon Genesis 2:17 (‘In the day that thou eatest [the fruit of the tree of life] thou shalt surely die’), Locke denies that Adam’s punishment by death could signify consignment to hell, as hell is commonly conceived. It “seems a strange way of understanding ... by a law that says, ‘For felony thou shalt die,’ not that he should lose his life, but be kept alive in perpetual exquisite torments.” It is more reasonable to understand “by death here . . . nothing but a ceasing to be, the losing of all actions of life and sense” (RC 3-4). In the system of carrots and sticks with which God governs Adam and his posterity, the stick signifies merely the denial of the carrot: “an exclusion from paradise and a loss of immortality is the portion of sinners” (11).24 The just and good God of the Bible chooses to govern humankind mildly, appealing to our desires rather than to our fears. A conception of death as nothingness may be cause for fear in itself, but such fear as it engen¬ ders is surely far milder and more easily governable than the fear accompanying the prospect of infinite and eternal torment. Thus God punishes as a wise parent and a just government punish: not with the vengeful, self-indulgent misproportion that characterizes the rule of a despot over slaves, but with the moderation, reasonableness, and respect proper to the educa¬ tion and governance of free people.25 Moreover, as suggested in the preceding chapter, the reasonableness of the Christian God bolsters our mental stability in his promise of rewards as well as his assignment of punishments. Reasonably received, the Christian promise sustains the hope that we may gain a joyful afterlife not simply via the grace of a willful, inscrutable God, but rather in reward for the merits of our earthly lives. Whereas the pagan moral philosophers left virtue “unendowed” and so attracting few suitors, the Christian promise appeals to solid calculations of “advantage” or of “reason and interest, and the care of ourselves,” to make virtue an enriching purchase (RC 245).26 Assuring his rational creatures that “if they live well here, they shall be happy hereafter,” the Christian God grants us substantial responsibility for our ultimate destiny. Estab¬ lishing a firm connection between the faithful contemplation of the prospect of an afterlife and the imperatives of secular rational action, God lessons our anxiety, enabling us to direct it reasonably. By establishing this connection, Locke’s reasonable Christianity reconciles us to the imperfection of the mixed, laborious happiness that is available to us in this life, and it provides much-needed ballast for the mind in its reflections on the experience of mortality. In this way above all, it assists us in the acquisition and preservation of our property in ourselves.

The Right of Private Property The reading of Christianity that Locke sets forth mainly in the Letter Concerning Toleration and in The Reasonableness of Christianity supplies the crucial theo¬ logical justification for the establishment of the property right in its position of

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moral and political primacy in the Second Treatise.11 At the same time, Locke’s account of property provides crucial psychological preparation and support for his reasonable reading of Christianity, and for the doctrine of individual rights more generally. The “regulating and preserving of property” is the primary end of political power, Locke declares at the outset of the Second Treatise. He adds subsequently that the “great art of government” is “the increase of lands and the right employ¬ ing of them,” requiring princes “by established laws of liberty to secure protection and incouragement to the honest industry of Mankind” (7TII.1, 42). Through the wise protection and direction of the right of property, grounded in the immense productivity of human labor, the rational Lockean prince becomes “quickly . . . too hard for his neighbours,” and his subjects enjoy an ever-increasing abundance of the material things useful to human life (11.42; cf. 37, 40-48). As an indispens¬ able condition of the achievement of a condition of security and prosperity, the property right contributes enormously to the remedy of the human condition’s most palpable or pressing natural and man-made ills. But it contributes just as substantially to the remedy of the deeper psychological maladies inherent in the natural human condition. In this respect, Locke’s promotion of the life of produc¬ tive appropriation can be viewed as an application of Montaigne’s policy of diverting our attention from our deepest, most unsettling passions, and especially from the fear that arises from our awareness of our own mortality.28 Montesquieu provides an uncommonly direct statement of this policy, observing that “a more certain way to attack religion is by favor, by the comforts of life, by the hope of fortune, not by what reminds one of it, but by what makes one forget it.”29 To state Locke’s intention still more precisely, however, one should say that the ethic of productive appropriation operates not simply to divert our minds but rather to supply a measure of mental fortification, to help prepare us to govern rationally our fears and other discomposing passions. To say that the property right represents for Locke a kind of secularizing ballast, lending steadiness to the mind as it responds to its grander fears and longings, is not to say that Locke would have us reconceive ourselves as creatures of mere secular interest, absorbed in the pursuance of security and material comfort. It bears repeated emphasis that property, as Locke conceives of it, is not merely an interest, but a right. It is an interest enlarged or ennobled by its enlist¬ ment into the service of Locke’s doctrine of justice. By employing the term “property” both narrowly and broadly, signifying the right of productive acquisi¬ tion and also the general array of fundamental personal rights (7TII. 123), Locke indicates that the acquisition and possession of material property provides crucial psychological sustenance for the sense of justice or devotion to fundamental rights that the cause of rational liberty requires. Property for Locke is in a sense the first, most fundamental of rights, a particular right whose exercise solidifies our claims to rights in general by solidifying our very status as rational selves. One might object that however powerful our interests in material abundance, power, and even security, they remain interests, rooted in calculations of personal

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utility, and as such they are imperfectly aligned with the cause of justice or rational self-government. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke himself observes that the inculcation of “an ingenuous Detestation of this shameful Vice . . . will be a better Guard against Dishonesty, than any Considerations drawn from Interest” (110). As this observation indicates, the concern for reputation is to serve as the primary psychological basis of the desired prerational or sentimen¬ tal detestation of injustice and vice. Although reputation is “not the true Principle and Measure of Virtue ... yet it is that, which comes nearest to it” (61; cf. ECHU 1.3.25; 2.28.12). Locke’s appeal to the concern for reputation is not, however, simply independent of an appeal to interest, but represents an appeal to ennobled or enlightened interest. His identification of the encouragement of productive industry with the great art of government in the Second Treatise is of a piece with his description of the regulation of the concern for reputation as “the great Secret of Education” in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (56). A concern for the seeming externality of property, in conjunction with the concern to fare well in the opinions of others, can assist in awakening and civilizing one’s sense of self. It can stimulate the pride or self-respect required for self-ownership, while yet supplying a sobering reminder of the dependence and necessity that endure as elements of the human condition. In the Second Treatise, the basic problem that Locke intends the right of property to address derives once again from the opposition between the polar, egoistic passions for dominion and preservation. Those inclined toward content¬ ment with bare, momentary self-preservation at the cost of liberty must come to embrace the principle that liberty or consent is the indispensable guarantor of preservation: “Freedom from Absolute, Arbitrary Power, is so necessary to, and closely joyned with a Man’s Preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his Preservation and Life together” (7T 11.23). At the other extreme, those inclined to value liberty only so far as it facilitates their domination of others must come to regard se//-dominion as the fullest and only truly desirable form of dominion. They must come to experience the defensive capacity to resist the tyrannical assertions of other individuals, and ultimately of their own exorbitant desires, as the proper basis of true freedom and power. Between domination and submissiveness lies self-government. In the Second Treatise, private property functions as an indispensable support of self-government. The right of property, understood narrowly as the right of material acquisition, represents the primary means for effecting the desired moderation and reconciliation of these opposing, equally debilitating inclinations, and thereby for establishing the psychological grounds of a modernized principle of republican liberty. At the outset of his discussion, Locke indicates the complex, harmonizing function of property in his constitutional scheme by finding two distinct principles with overlapping implications at the bottom of the right of appropriation. The first of these principles is the right of self-preservation, which Locke understands broadly as a right not only “to Meat and Drink, and such other things, as Nature affords for [our] Subsistence,” but also to whatever provides for the “Support and

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Comfort of [our] being” (11.25-26). Yet, however broad his understanding of this first principle, Locke proceeds to introduce a second principle that is broader still, and, as it turns out, more characteristic of his teaching of property as a whole. Because “every Man has a Property in his own Person,” the “Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands ... are properly his.” Whatever we “mix” with our labor becomes our own by virtue of its mixing with something that is already our own (27; cf. 44). Locke’s grounding of the primitive right of appropriation in the act of laboring effects a further broadening of that right, as a consequence of his conception of laboring as a particularly important expression of personal agency or self-ownership. The principle of self-ownership means generally that we have a presumptive natural right simply to act: to dispose of our selves or labor so as best to secure our own well-being, so long as we do not threaten the domination, the unjust appropriation of the labor or the agency, of another. So far as it is grounded in labor or personal agency, the right of appropriation obtains irrespec¬ tive of any purely material considerations such as the claimant’s level of material need or comfort. The only natural or reasonable limits upon that right derive from the injunctions to use, not spoil what one appropriates, and to recognize in others a right of appropriation equal to one’s own (27, 31, 33-34, 36-37, 45-50). The two principles that Locke sets forth as the bases of the property right correspond generally to the two classes whose characteristic motivations he attempts to reconcile or harmonize. To those inclined toward a narrow concern for their own preservation, Locke teaches that preservation requires property. The “great and chief end, therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation” not simply of their biological integrity or personal comfort, but “of their Property” (124; also 222). Locke’s association of the concern for preservation with an effectively unlimited right of productive appropriation represents much more than a proposal for ameliorating the natural condition of material poverty (32, 37, 40-46). By showing the depend¬ ence of preservation on property—on both a general and a particular assertion of right— Locke means not only to show the way toward material security but also to construct an indispensable bulwark of civil or political liberty. As he explains in the Essay, our “mixed-mode” ideas of actions, the experiential data of human agency or freedom, represent only “fleeting, and transient Combinations of simple Ideas” (2.22.8). But whereas the merely transient, momentary existence of most actions renders uncertain their psychological or pedagogical power, their power to imprint themselves on our memory and then to guide our future actions, the particular action of appropriating represents the employment and manifestation of one’s freedom to create or enlarge a visible, tangible, more-or-less enduring domain. Thus the Lockean political ethic, with the property right as its centerpiece, is far less “bourgeois” or spiritless than some critics suppose.30 As an action that consists of the production of substances, productive appropriation carries a peculiar pedagogical power to expand the individual’s consciousness of self. Locke’s property right thus manifests a certain “forward defense” strategy, a design to raise the proper spirit of defensiveness against arbitrary power by

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enlarging our personal domains of freedom and power, thus making more visible and more complete that which is to be defended.31 Out of the common concern for preservation, the Lockean stress on property would forge a vigilant, dignified demand for preservation in freedom}1 On the other hand, for the very reason that it is capable of expanding and inspiriting the concern for preservation, the acquisitive desire itself is in need of domestication. At the heart of the desire for “Propriety and Possession” is a “love of Dominion” (STCE 105) that can assume dangerously antisocial forms, so long as it remains unmixed with the moderating concern for preservation.33 Therefore Locke avoids a simple reversal of the Hobbesian priority of preservation to liberty. Alongside his declaration that “the end of Law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge Freedom,” Locke proclaims emphatically that political power properly conceived “hath no other end but preservation” (7T 11.57, 135; also 124). Here as elsewhere, to moderate the desire for dominion or to defend the principle of liberty as distinct from that of license or arbitrariness, Locke reminds the lovers of liberty of their ultimate subjection to necessity. Still, as he means to civilize, not simply suppress the desire for dominion, Locke needs to find an expression of that desire that does not simply disappear in its mixture with the concern for preservation. By virtue of its dual grounding in laboring—thus in free self-disposal—as well as in preservation, the right of material appropriation is perfectly suited to Locke’s need. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke associates the desire to possess with the vice of covetousness, which is “early to be weeded out” of children’s prevailing motivations (105, 110). Nonetheless, in counting the desire to possess as one of the “two Roots of almost all the Injustice and Contention, that so disturb Humane Life,” Locke takes care to distinguish that desire from other, more direct expressions of the desire for dominion. However vicious in itself, the possessive desire to have “things” or objects at one’s disposal is less surely productive of injustice than the desire to be “submitted to by others,” to have actual persons at one’s disposal (105, 104). In part for this reason, Locke’s correction of the vice of covetousness does not involve the suppression or extirpa¬ tion of the desire to acquire. To the contrary, he recommends teaching children that one “loses nothing by his Liberality," indeed that “the most Liberal has always most plenty, with Esteem and Commendation to boot” (110). Locke confirms and clarifies his approval of a properly moderated acquisitiveness by his subsequent suggestion concerning the provision of playthings for children. Lest they be taught “Pride, Vanity, and Covetousness” along with a perpetual, inher¬ ently immoderate dissatisfaction, children should have few or no playthings bought for them, but should instead be required to make them for themselves. “This will accustom them to seek for what they want in themselves . . . whereby they will be taught Moderation in their Desires, Application, Industry, Thought, Contriv¬ ance, and Good Husbandry” (130). The desire to acquire and possess is not to be suppressed, but rather to be subjected to the discipline of industry or laboring, and

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thus detached from the desire to command others’ labor, as the condition of its gratification.34 This teaching of Some Thoughts Concerning Education is in perfect harmony with the teaching of chapter five of the Second Treatise, legitimating the acquisi¬ tive desire by attaching it to liberality and self-reliant creativity. In the latter work, appropriation in unlimited amounts is a natural, unalienable right, a fundamental condition of the general pursuit of happiness. For so long as it is accomplished (directly or indirectly) through productive laboring, appropriation even on a very large scale is fully consistent with a respect for the rights of others. Indeed, in the logic of Locke’s argument, the protection and encouragement of such appropria¬ tion is required as a necessary condition of justice. Locke’s ambiguous argument in the First Treatise that charity (here transformed into a dictate of justice) accords the needy a “Right” to another’s surplus (42)35 implies that the destitute have in the extremity of their condition a right to theft or even robbery. Natural necessity or the natural condition of penury confers upon us not only the right but also the obligation to labor productively, in order to lay the foundation of justice or civil concord. For this reason, Locke is concerned to show that whoever “appropriates land to himself by his labour, does not lessen but increase the common stock of mankind” (7TII.37). More precisely, this means that whoever acquires by apply¬ ing intelligent labor, fortified by “Invention and Arts,” to the raw materials supplied by nature, in fact improves the material condition of humankind (44; more generally, 40-48). The “Study of Nature ... if rightly directed” toward the amelioration of our natural material condition, “may be of greater benefit to Mankind, than the Monuments of exemplary Charity, that have at so great Charge been raised, by the Founders of Flospitals and Alms-houses” (ECHU 4.12.12). With its Baconian emphasis on the productivity of labor, the defense of the property right in the Second Treatise eliminates the difficulty, stated by Locke in the early manuscript concerning the law of nature (LN fols 105-19) as well as in the First Treatise, that a condition of scarcity poses for the grounding of justice in individual self-interest. As the true virtue of charity lies not in pure altruism or self-abnegation, so the true, effective correction of the vice of covetousness lies in the modification or redirection, not the suppression of the passion that fuels it. To serve the cause of preservation, the desire for dominion must be made produc¬ tive and rewarded for its productivity. Those moved by the love of eminence must come to recognize the superiority of the active, productive industry that distin¬ guishes the modem commercial classes, among others, from the traditional upper classes characterized by a “Quarrelsom and Contentious” idleness.36 Locke therefore proposes an understanding of the principle of distributive justice that is jurally egalitarian but inegalitarian in some of its effects. Justice requires that all rational members of society benefit from the regime of productive acquisitiveness, but not that they all benefit in equal degrees. Mindful of both the natural differ¬ ences among individuals in “Parts and Merit” (11.54) and the equally consequen¬ tial human desire to be credited for such distinction, Locke insists that a wellconstituted political society must recognize and reward superior industry. “God

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gave the World to Men in Common,” but gave it especially “to the use of the Industrious and Rational,” who enlarge the common stock by their rational, productive industry (11.34; also 37, 48). “Men have agreed to disproportionate and unequal Possessions of the Earth.” The invention of money in particular has “introduced (by Consent) larger Possessions, and a Right to them” (7T 11.50, 36, emphasis supplied; cf. 131). Locke addresses the problem of partisanship or of class division as it appears in the Second Treatise by designing an egalitarian principle that is capable of accommodating natural and potentially salutary inequalities among human beings. By conceiving of human equality as grounded in the principle of property in oneself, Locke conceives of equality as a two-dimensional principle, guaranteeing for the majority the preservation that is their primary concern while securing for the more ambitious minority the opportunity to achieve at least the more civil forms of eminence. This rewarding of rational industry bases social distinction upon a standard of achievement that is understandable, accessible, and beneficial to the common majority. And it bears repeated emphasis that the rewards that the Lockean society promises the rational and industrious minority are not exclusively or primarily material in nature. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, just as he simultaneously moderates and legitimates the desire to possess, so Locke suggests that children should learn civility or respect for the principle of natural equality in part by learning that “No part of their Superiority will be hereby lost; but the Distinction increased. . . . The more they have, the better humour’d they should be taught to be” (117; also 109). To soothe the partisan irritations inevita¬ bly effected by a transition to a more egalitarian society from a traditionally inegalitarian society, Locke appeals to those moved by a sense of their own superiority not to suppress but rather to vindicate that sense. The lovers of emi¬ nence are to prove themselves worthy of it, by demonstrating themselves superior to their own desire for superiority, or at least to the more traditional and less utilitarian manifestations of it. This appeal nicely exemplifies the psychological subtlety and complexity of Locke’s promotion of the principle of natural jural equality: respectful assent to that principle appears for some less a duty than a mark of dignity, a privilege of a distinguished status.37 In sum, helping to energize the virtues and to moderate the passions and vices that characterize the ambitious and the common, the Lockean property right provides indispensable support for the life of rational self-possession.

The Lockean Family The establishment of the property right is prior to the family in the Second Trea¬ tise’s order of presentation. This may signify Locke’s opinion that in the develop¬ ment of the human species, property in some crude forms is temporally prior to the appearance of recognizable, stable families. More important, however, it signifies Locke’s teaching that property is teleologically prior to the family: the perfection of individuals’ fundamental personhood, or property in themselves, is

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the end for the sake of which the family is properly ordered. This insistence upon the priority of personal property to familial authority represents, of course, the heart of Locke’s critique of Filmer’s patriarchal authoritarianism. Locke considers it vitally important to correct the “gross mistakes” that those under the influence of Filmerian principles are inclined to make concerning the power of parents (IT 11.53). It is therefore an imperative of historical scholarship that we understand clearly the nature of the family with which Locke would replace the Filmerian family. But it is politically important as well, for Locke’s reflections clearly hold great relevance for the debate over the constitution of the family that rages anew in our own day. With some justice, critics representing divergent moral persua¬ sions maintain that Locke’s principles bear some responsibility for the troubles that beset the family in contemporary liberal societies. A careful examination reveals, however, that Locke’s reflections on family relations can yet supply useful counsel both to the antipatriarchalists among us and to their adversaries who believe that the antipatriarchal principle has been carried to harmful extremes. In establishing the teleological priority of property to the family, Locke intends to do more than the underlaborer’s work of discrediting Filmer’s false and harmful account and thus removing a crucial obstacle to the cause of rational liberty and political legitimacy. He means also to replace it with a conception of the family that can serve positively to promote that cause. For this reason, his insistent distinction of political from parental authority does not signify any principled, dogmatic separation of public and private spheres of action,38 or of the “personal” from the “political,” as contemporary feminists would have it. Locke provides no license for the persistence of a patriarchal private order, alongside and indepen¬ dent of—or operating ultimately to undermine—a jurally egalitarian public order. To the contrary, the purpose of the distinction between political and parental power is to place limits on the powers of parents as well as governments, enabling the family to perform its proper function within the surrounding political order. That function is educational, as Locke repeatedly indicates (1.90, 93; 11.56, 59, 61, 65, 67-69, 170). And its extreme importance appears in his observation that “of all the Men we meet with, Nine Parts of Ten are what they are. Good or Evil, useful or not, by their Education” (STCE 1). Lockean education not only com¬ prises the principles and modes of instruction elaborated in Some Thoughts Con¬ cerning Education but also depends significantly upon the structure and governing principles of the family within which it takes place. Ultimately, a sound political constitution depends upon a sound familial constitution. Moreover, notwithstand¬ ing Locke’s emphasis on the importance of the early years of individuals’ develop¬ ment, the children are not the only beneficiaries of the education that the Lockean family provides. In subtle but crucial respects, adults too, and in particular adult (or full-grown) males, are to benefit from its civilizing influence. The natural problem for which the institution of the family is to provide a solution is twofold. The first, more easily recognizable aspect of the problem concerns the duration of the period of “weakness and imperfection” into which human children are bom (7T 11.65). In the relative length of the period of chil-

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dren’s dependency, along with the related fact that women commonly conceive and give birth again, before their prior offspring are able to care for themselves, “lies the chief, if not the only reason,” Locke states boldly, “why the Male and Female in Mankind are tyed to a longer conjunction than other Creatures.” He proceeds to affirm more specifically that for the reason stated, “the Father, who is bound to care for those he hath begot, is under an Obligation to continue in Conjugal Society with the same Woman longer than other Creatures” (80). Re¬ flecting upon the basis of this obligation, however, one finds that beneath the relative boldness with which Locke presents this nonsacramental, purely anthropo¬ logical account of marriage lies a still greater boldness, and the more difficult aspect of the problem. Despite Rousseau’s objections to such seemingly breezy affirmations of the natural firmness and endurance of human family ties, what appears as a thematic concern in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality by no means escapes Locke’s notice: the natural basis of familial and especially paternal obligations is, to say the least, problematic.39 Viewed from a more traditional perspective, it may seem odd in itself that Locke derives children’s right to inherit their parents’ property, and by extension their right to parental care, from the parents’ “strong desire ... of propagating their Kind” (1.88; emphasis supplied).40 However that may be, Locke indicates in observations scattered throughout his works that parental desire is at best an uncertain source of effective parental care. The “Natural Love and Tenderness” (1.97; cf. 11.63, 67, 75; STCE 34, 99, 107; ECHU 1.3.12) that teaches most human parents to provide for their children does not necessarily teach them to provide wisely. Such affection moves parents, and especially mothers, at least as commonly to spoil children as to raise them (STCE 4, 5, 13, 34, 107; TTII.67).41 Less commonly but more tellingly, the naturally problematic character of parental desire is illustrated by the abundant evidence that Locke collects, mentioned in chapter four, of parental indifference and even extreme cruelty toward their children (L/Vfol. 74; 7TI.56-9; ECHU 1.3.9-12). In these respects, the problem of the family represents a particularly important manifestation of the general problem of mental errancy, or of the anarchic character of human devotions, that troubles the state of nature. Moreover, the problem of familial ties exemplifies the natural disorderliness of the mind in its impulsiveness or shortsightedness as well as in its errancy. As we have seen, Locke like Rousseau conceives of the native human consciousness as a succession of discrete moments, consisting of simple, mainly sensual experi¬ ences. Locke’s discussion leaves us to assume that in itself, this native impulsive¬ ness is a common human, not sex-specific, trait. Yet in a specific discussion of procreation, he ominously calls attention to the thoughtlessness of males in partic¬ ular in indulging their momentary desire: “What Father of a Thousand, when he begets a Child, thinks farther than the satisfying his present Appetite?” Juxtaposed with the length of the period of children’s dependency, this pointed observation of men’s native appetitiveness and absorption in the present clarifies the nature and magnitude of the problem as Locke conceives of it.42 Still further, Locke’s

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specific reference to fathers gives reason to doubt that he also refers exclusively or mainly to men in the sentence immediately following, where, with notable irony, he describes God’s practice of continuing the human species “most com¬ monly without the intention, and often against the Consent and Will of the Beget¬ ter” (1.54). A “young Savage has, perhaps, his Head fill’d with Love and Hunting” (ECHU 1.2.27), such as to be unlikely to perceive very clearly any moral distinction between the two. David Blankenhom’s comment is sharp and to the point: “Here is male sexuality freed from societal norms. It is asocial copulation, impersonal impregnation. It is frequently predatory and violent.”43 At minimum, women’s native impulsiveness much more readily becomes compatible with care for their progeny than does that of men. It seems telling in this respect that Locke refers exclusively to mothers, in observing in a different context that “the Death of a child, that was the daily delight of his Mother’s Eyes, and joy of her Soul, rends from her Heart the whole comfort of her Life, and gives her all the torment imaginable; use the Consolations of Reason in this case, and you were as good preach Ease to one on the Rack, and hope to allay, by rational Discourses, the Pain of his Joints tearing asunder” (.ECHU 2.33.13). The “frequent,” natural outcome of the uncivilized, characteristically male pursuit of transient adventures is that “the Husband and Wife part”—that is, the “husband” departs—and “the Children are all left to the Mother, follow her, and are wholly under her Care and Provision” (TTII. 65).44 In this individualist state of nature—in this respect, a condition increasingly well known to contemporary liberal socie¬ ties—the uncertain and difficult endeavor of maternal parentage is all that protects children from being “thrust... out among Brutes,” and abandoned “to a state as wretched, and as much beneath that of a Man, as theirs” (11.63). In short, before they can perform their specific function of raising children, families must first exist. The relative weakness or absence of the relevant instincts means that the formation of stable families cannot be simply presumed, that human beings require reasons or incentives to assume and maintain the stations of spouses and parents. To put it in other words, the great difficulty that human beings of all ages experience in becoming genuine adults means that the family must be so constituted as to exercise a civilizing influence upon the fully grown as well as upon children. For men in particular, who are often in their spontaneous develop¬ ment little more than fully grown children, impulsively begetting and abandoning their own children, the emergence of properly constructed institutions of marriage and the family is crucial to the achievement of adulthood. They must provide incentives for men to stay with the mothers of their children, to raise rather than to abandon or exploit those children, and in general to take responsibility for their actions. At first glance, the patriarchal family, the most historically common familial form, could appear to provide the requisite incentives and thus to present a satisfactory solution to the problem, just as paternal monarchy could constitute for many societies an “easie, and almost natural” solution to the problem of the state of nature (11.74-76, 105-107). But just as the institution of paternal monarchy appears in the effect as a fateful error, bom of a “negligent, and unforeseeing

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Innocence” (11.94), so the patriarchal family proves upon examination to exacer¬ bate the problems it is instituted to solve. The patriarchal family could seem at first sight a satisfactory solution, on the basis of a part of the argument developed in the preceding section on property. So far as material property assists us in gathering ourselves, expands and gives focus to our power of agency, and thus increases our self-concernment and respon¬ sibility, it may seem that a secure claim of property in one’s family could function as a still more powerful source of these beneficial effects. The attractions of absolute dominion in the domestic sphere, on this logic, would compensate men adequately for their domestication, for their surrender or curtailment of the life of adventurous freedom and their assumption of the duties to provide, protect, and civilize.45 Upon closer examination, however, the patriarchal family reveals defects of such magnitude as to overwhelm whatever benefits it may bring. Above all, the patriarchal family suffers from a fatal defect in the analogy between family and material property upon which it is based. Fundamental to Locke’s moral and political thought as a whole is the principle that persons, who are by nature self-owning, may not be treated as the property of another. Given the necessary qualifications, the same may be said of developing persons. Let us recall that an important part of the usefulness of material property in Locke’s argument lies in its power to divert and thus to moderate the desire for dominion over other human beings. As property exists “for the benefit and sole Advantage of the proprietor, so that he may even destroy the thing, that he has Property in by his use of it, where need requires” (1.92), a claim of property in one’s family could hardly serve the cause of moderating the antisocial desires, or of habituating men to treat the other members of their families with the sort of devotion and respect that is due rational beings. To the contrary, the constitution of the patriar¬ chal family bestows harmful flattery upon the domineering desires of fathers and first bom sons (cf. 1.10, II.91-4, 143); does injustice to mothers by disrespecting their own rational faculty46 and relegating them to a debilitating condition of childlike dependency; and nourishes in mothers, daughters, and younger sons alike, if not a poisonous resentment, then a negligent, tmsting submissiveness grounded in the dangerous illusion of the naturalness of government in general and of absolute government in particular. In its constitutional form alone, the patriar¬ chal family thus contravenes among all members the fundamental Lockean pur¬ pose of developing the capacity for rational self-government. To lend the requisite support to the political constitution, the familial consti¬ tution must exemplify, and thereby raise members’ desire for, properly limited, civil, reasonable, and even consensual government. The family in Locke’s design achieves its pedagogical purposes by virtue of its liberalized conceptions of both parental authority and “conjugal” or marital relations. Considering first the pedagogy of parental authority, one can see how Locke designs this relation to raise or fortify especially in men a desire to become responsible members of families, bearing a proper respect for the limits of their legitimate domestic authority.

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On the premise that in human beings, unlike all other animals, the desire for self-preservation or individual well-being is more powerful even than the desire to preserve one’s offspring (1.56, 86, 88), Locke reasons that for human parent¬ hood to become more consistently effective, the latter must be attached to the former desire. Parenthood must become a dictate of policy. As we have seen, Locke refers to children as continuations or extensions of their parents (1.88, 97). He means by this not only to explain, but also to strengthen and to bring rational clarity to parental affection. Ever wary of the mind’s errancy and susceptibility to flattery, Locke counsels parents to exercise their powers of foresight, reflecting upon their own weakness as well as their strength, as they regard their children as extensions of themselves. As vivid reminders of the natural cycle of growth and decay, children can remind parents of the impermanence of their youthful vigor, of their prospective weakness and neediness in old age (see 1.90). The uneasiness engendered by this reminder serves a useful purpose, so far as it stimulates fathers in particular to marry, thereby establishing the legitimacy of their paternal claims, and to provide for their children so that in turn they may secure their children’s assistance as they grow old (11.80). Formed by the habits and incentives associated with family life properly conceived, men become more regularly civil, social, and industrious, in accordance with Locke’s design. To sharpen and focus this salutary parental uneasiness, as well as to teach children to expect legitimate, benevolent government, Locke makes clear that the children’s duty to honor their parents—including the duty to assist them in their declining years—is to be understood as a dictate of reciprocal justice, rendering benefits in proportion to benefits received. It is thus conditional, variable “by the different care and kindness, trouble and expence, which is often imployed upon one Child, more than another” (11.70). But a problem arises. As the reciprocal benefits in this exchange are not rendered contemporaneously, parents might require a stronger motive for parental beneficence than the prospect of the justice or gratitude of their offspring. To leave the practice of intergenerational care dependent upon the presence of such virtues in adult offspring would seem to leave it too often unendowed. For this Machiavellian problem, Locke finds a Machiavellian solution. By extending the period of dependency in one important respect well beyond the age of minority, parents can increase the likelihood that their offspring behave well as investments, repaying as adults the care bestowed upon them as children. One can make even ungrateful progeny more truly, de¬ pendably one’s “own” by controlling the patrimony whose loss might touch them more deeply than the loss of their own father (II.72-73).47 This solution reinforces the lesson of nature’s salutary necessity, teaching parents and children alike that a simple trust in inheritance is unwise—whether it concerns the inheritance of wealth or of duties, or inheritances from one’s natural kinsmen or from nature itself. It is necessary and salutary to work for what one gets, and begets. Parents and children are schooled in responsibility and limited, legitimate government not only through the exercise of parental authority over children, but also through its division between husbands and wives. By his seemingly hesitant,

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actually insistent replacement of paternal authority with parental authority, Locke would teach parents to practice legitimate government in their relations with one another, and thus to supply children with a crucially early, uniquely important example. However urgent the need to distinguish parental from political authority, in very important respects, in Locke’s design, husbands and wives in their rela¬ tions with each other provide for their children a scaled-down, domesticated model of political power. It is significant that the discussion of marriage appears as the beginning of the Second Treatise's chapter “Of Political or Civil Society.” Ob¬ serving the relations of parents bound in Lockean marriage, children see that the power that governs them is divided between two persons, and that the decisions concerning the exercise of that power represent the deliberate consensus of dis¬ tinct, mutually respectful, reasonable partners. To some readers, this will seem an implausibly egalitarian depiction of the Lockean marriage, especially in view of Locke’s suggestion that in case of dispute, “the last Determination, i.e. the Rule . . . naturally falls to the Man’s share, as the abler and the stronger” (11.82).48 Here, however, one may apply Melissa Butler's fundamentally sound judgment on a related point. Locke was “a good enough propagandist to have realized how deeply ingrained patriarchalism was in everyday life. ” Having freed his “audience of fathers, household heads, and family sovereigns . . . from political subjection to a patriarchal superior,” he “did not risk alienating his audience by clearly conferring a new political status on their subordinates under the patriarchal system, that is, on women.”49 This usage of “clearly” deserves emphasis, as Locke’s silence on the political question and his ambiguity on the question of domestic relations cannot entirely conceal the implications of the alteration in women’s domestic status that he envisions. In contrast to his reserve concerning the political status of women, Locke conveys relatively openly his intention to prepare an egalitarian revolution in their domestic status. Immediately after he declares men to be “naturally” abler and stronger, he renders this declaration ineffectual, maintaining that the resolution of marital disputes is to be determined not by an appeal to nature, but rather in accordance with the terms of the particular contracts upon which the marriages in question are based (11.82; cf. 78, 81-83; 1.47). Locke’s contractualist conception of marriage carries profound pedagogical implications. To move naturally errant men to marry, Locke again reminds them of their weakness, this time not only in prospect, but also with respect to the present inconveniences of a solitary or unattached life. As we have seen, Locke holds that man is a creature for whom, “in his own judgment,” it is “not good ... to be alone.” We are driven into society, in particular into “conjugal” society, by the “strong Obligations of Necessity, Convenience, and Inclination” (77; cf. ECHU 2.21.34). But as these strong natural “obligations” to engage in conjugal relations are in themselves not sufficiently strong or well focused to form the bonds of stable, healthy marriages, the institution of marriage requires conventional support. The particular conven¬ tion or contract in which Locke finds the reasonable basis of marriage is designed to extend our natural uneasiness over time, and thereby to attach it to the cause of

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legitimacy. By defining marriage as contractual, not sacramental, and thus effec¬ tively “determinable” by either partner, Locke alerts potentially domineering or negligent husbands in particular that the support and comfort they desire from their wives, like the honor they expect from their children, is contingent upon their own good behavior. In the family as in political society proper, the right and threat of resistance stand as “ the best fence against Rebellion ” or abuse of power (11.226). One has an effective motive to remain a responsible, respectful, and affectionate husband, so far as he feels an uneasiness upon considering that his “Wife has, in many cases, a Liberty to separate from him” (11.81-82). Further, in considering this employment of the contractualist principle to form husbands (and therewith stable, productive members of society) out of natural men, we should not lose sight of its complementary effect in forming women’s characters. Something approaching a principle of androgyny is at work here, proceeding from Locke’s more general determination to assimilate men and women as rational persons. The revision of paternal power to parental power means not only a correction of men’s authoritarianism, but also a narrowing of sex-based differences in both parents’ contributions to childrearing and perhaps to family life in general. Let us take care not to push this principle to unwarranted extremes. As our examination of his epistemology has shown, Locke does not propose an extreme rejection of (what is now called) the principle of "essentialism" in general, and he does not here go so far as to imply the pure conventionality or arbitrariness of gender distinctions. To suggest that men and women respectively must struggle for rationality against characteristically masculine and characteristically feminine sentiments or passions is not to suggest that they must struggle to transcend mas¬ culinity and femininity altogether. Notwithstanding his (largely ironic) reference to early paternal monarchs as “nursing Fathers tender and carefull of the public weale” (11.110), Locke's design of moderately feminizing men does not neces¬ sarily yield a model of the sensitive, nurturing male, in touch with his feminine self, of recent pop-psychological or sociological legend.50 Nonetheless, so far as he appeals to men to remember their weakness and their sociality (and thus their dependency) and to focus their power of self-extension on their property and their families, Locke aims to domesticate—to feminize—men.51 Correspondingly, so far as he appeals to women to find their identities in their own independent persons, not in their relations with others, therefore to under¬ stand their social and even familial attachments as contractual or artificial, not natural, and to overcome their propensity toward a certain overindulgent senti¬ mentality in their approach to motherhood, Locke aims to masculinize women. For men and women to become more perfectly rational, it seems, each must acquire some of the other’s characteristic qualities. This convergence or mixing of masculine and feminine applies also to the characters of public and private spheres of activity: the feminization of public life consists of its reorientation toward the reasonable, domestic ends of preservation and private liberty and happiness, while the masculinization of private or domestic

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life consists of its reconstitution in accordance with the principles of independent personhood, individual rights, and contractualism. Of particular importance is the aim of desentimentalizing the family. By introducing a measure of emotional austerity into its constitutional structure and principles, Locke seeks to inoculate the family against its tendency to breed sentiments of clannish partisanship or parochialism that must prove especially corrupting of a liberal political order, whose health depends upon the broad inculcation of a devotion to principles of impartial justice. The foregoing observations can suffice to discredit the objection of some present-day critics that Locke, notwithstanding his vigorous critique of Filmer, is in the decisive respect still beholden to the patriarchal tradition, and thus insuffi¬ ciently liberal and egalitarian in his conception of family relations. Another body of criticism appears as a mirror image of this first, however, holding Locke to be if anything too liberal and egalitarian, seemingly so zealous to overcome the patriarchal tradition as to blind himself to the dangers of its opposite extreme. In the latter view, Locke appears again as a captive of the tradition, with his reason constrained by his very opposition to it rather than by the forces favoring its perpetuation.52 Recently, of course, cultural commentators have undertaken to explore the causes of the rapid and ongoing dissolution of the family in liberaldemocratic societies, as manifested in particular in dramatic increases in the incidences of illegitimate parenthood and divorce. It is understandable that some of those commentators should trace these effects to theoretical causes, understand¬ ing them as realizations of the atomizing potential of modem liberal-democratic principles—of Locke’s principles, among others.53 In view of Locke’s liberalized, desentimentalized, individualist, contractualist family, one can scarcely deny the plausibility of such objections. Yet our insistence upon Locke’s “untimeliness” as a critic of his own received traditions requires an openness to the possibility that Locke might be untimely for us too, even as we remain in important respects his political descendants. That Locke proposes a remedy to the disease of patriarchal authoritarianism does not mean that he acts as a carrier of the anarchic, licentious individualism that increasingly afflicts our own society. It is important for us to understand clearly the corrosive, disintegrating potential of his principles, but it is equally important that we move beyond this partial understanding to an appreci¬ ation of their stabilizing powers as well. At the outset, those concerned about the coherence of the liberal family might indeed raise an eyebrow at Locke’s choice to present his discussion of parental power in the Second Treatise in the chapter preceding his discussion of marriage. This seemingly portentous ordering does not, however, betray any casualness on Locke’s part with respect to the necessity or primary utility of marriage as a childrearing institution. It represents in part an acknowledgment of natural-histori¬ cal fact. But more important, just as the placement of chapter five indicates the teleological priority of individual property to society, so the placement of chapters six and seven indicates the teleological priority of childrearing to marriage. The ends of marriage do of course include the “mutual Support, and Assistance, and

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a Communion of Interest too” between husbands and wives, and these are surely important. But marriage is above all “Conjugal Society,” as Locke carefully denominates it, indicating its “chief End, Procreation” (11.78). The primary end of marriage is procreation, and the relation that confers legitimacy upon procre¬ ation and secures the proper conditions for childrearing is marriage. This principle points toward the moderation inherent in Locke’s understanding of marriage as a voluntary, contractual relationship. The premise that marriage has a natural purpose implies that not all and not the most important of the obligations that it entails are determinable simply by the willful fiat of contracting parties. The nature of the marital, conjugal association would seem in particular to determine its proper duration, or to impose limits upon its rightful dissolution. It is in the matter of divorce that we reach the core of Locke’s reasoning concerning marriage and the family. In keeping with the implications of his own premise, Locke does suggest that the fulfillment of the purpose of marriage should signify the fulfillment, and thus the termination, of its natural obligations (11.81). Divorce would be therefore permissible when the children have reached the age of majority. In the very next paragraph, he appears to move significantly from this position, declaring that even in marriages with children who are minors, wives (and by implication husbands) may exercise “a Liberty to separate . . . where natural Right, or their Contract, allows it,” with “the Children upon such Separa¬ tion fall[ing] to the Father or Mother’s Lot, as such Contract does determine” (82). This does not, however, constitute a movement from a liberal to a libertarian or even a libertine view of divorce. Locke does not hereby normalize divorce,54 overriding his appeal to natural purposes or obligations with a pure contractarian¬ ism. He affirms that in certain exceptional circumstances, natural right permits divorce even where minor children are involved. Although he supplies no exam¬ ples of such circumstances, one can easily conceive of cases in which the well¬ being of the children themselves, in particular their protection against parental abuse, is best served by the separation of the parents. Moreover, one must recall in this context Locke’s qualification of the natural obligation to preserve others, “only when [one’s] own Preservation comes not in competition” (II.6). To gener¬ alize somewhat, it seems to be Locke’s reasoning that whereas the welfare of the children entails a presumptive obligation to remain in a marriage at least for the duration of the children’s minority, the natural right of self-preservation overrides this obligation, in cases involving the fact or threat of serious spousal abuse. More generally still, the logic inherent in any contract concluded by rights-bearing persons dictates that it be “determinable,” or subject to a judgment of its dissolu¬ tion. As “no rational Creature can be supposed to change his condition with an intention to be worse,” no one could reasonably become party to a contract the effect of which were to expose her- or himself to abuse without remedy (II. 131; cf. 11.90-93, 164, 168). On the other hand, the contractual basis of Lockean marriage certainly does not mean that divorce is permissible in all cases simply upon demand, justified by nothing more substantial than a momentary whim, a desire to enhance one’s

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personal growth, or any other vague, subjective, likely transitory opinion con¬ cerning the betterment of one’s personal condition. By uncritically validating all proclaimed grievances, a regime of “no-fault” divorce would facilitate thought¬ lessness in both beginning and ending marriages, in direct contradiction of the Lockean understanding of marriage and of contract more generally. To make a contract is to impose a binding obligation upon oneself. We have the right to make contracts, only so far as we are persons—only so far as we are not mere creatures of impulse or flux, but instead self-owning beings capable of deliberation and of forming a character or identity that, in its extension over time, guarantees our responsibility for the consequences of our actions and for the promises we make. Locke’s grounding of marriage in contract means that marriage for Locke is grounded in rational choice, not arbitrary will, and is designed to reflect and to enhance the rationality of the parties and their offspring. It therefore dissolves, like political society, only for cause—only when a “long Train of Abuses, Prevari¬ cations, and Artifices, all tending the same way,” signify to a sensible person a deliberate, irreparable breach of contract (11.225; cf. 11.210). As Locke’s contractualism circumscribes the justifications, so too his accom¬ panying strategy of desentimentalizing family relations circumscribes the motives for divorce. As we have seen, Locke seeks to fortify parental obligations by reminding parents of their desire or need for friendship and support from their children as they grow older. This desire may deter divorce, even if one considers only the material consequences of divorce. Prudent parents will think carefully about dividing their bequest, on this reasoning, so far as their power of bequest constitutes a major source of their power to command their children’s loyalty (see 11.80). Yet as children’s emotional inheritance is at least as important as their economic inheritance, Locke maintains that sound parental policy involves much more than the manipulation of children’s material interests. A wise parent must establish firmly in the child’s mind a confident sense of “your Care and Love of him,” thus engendering “a peculiar Affection for you” (STCE 99; cf. 96). Of course, Locke does also enlist the aid of fathers in his effort to teach us to face squarely the aspect of unprovidedness in the human condition, counseling them to inspire in their children a sense of awe and recommending a number of measures designed to cultivate physical and mental toughness. But this in no way cancels his insistence upon the need for parental care and affection. In general, Locke recog¬ nizes that the experience of radical unprovidedness may be just as productive of irrationality as the notion of nature’s providedness. In the social context, this applies in particular to the emotional unprovidedness to which absent, negligent, excessively harsh or distant parents may subject children. Recognizing that family dissolution may signify a failure of parental care especially to younger children, thus engendering in those children feelings of anger, resentment, or inadequacy that are likely to endure into adulthood, the prudent Lockean parent would have further reason to view early, unnecessary divorce as most unwise policy. Still, it is fair to question the long-term viability of families, and of marriages in particular, in which the care of the members and partners for one another is

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thus reduced—quite openly, it seems—to a consideration of policy.55 Such an account appears to signify the intrusion into family relations of Montaigne’s distinction between true and common friendships, with the understanding that even these seemingly most intimate relations are normally to be governed by the princi¬ ples proper to common friendships.56 It may seem therefore to confirm some critics’ depictions of an anerotic, “sere-souled” bachelor Locke, and to supply at least partial justification for the revolt of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century romantics against the allegedly bloodless, calculating utilitarianism of early modem liberalism.57 To do full justice to Locke, however, one must take care not to overstate the emotional austerity that characterizes the Lockean family, and one must question on the other hand whether the passion, allure, and excitement of the romanticism that arises in response can compensate adequately for what it surrenders in sobri¬ ety and realism. One may reasonably doubt that the latter, in the final analysis, better serves the pursuit of true and solid happiness. By his relatively cool ac¬ counting of the secondary purposes of marriage, Locke does not betray an indif¬ ference to spouses’ “Care, and Affection” for one another, but rather suggests that their affectional bonds grow more safely and reliably out of mutual support, assistance, and common interest than out of natural attraction (11.78). One loves, not with a view toward the eventuality of hatred or indifference, but certainly mindful of the rareness and unreliability of pure romantic love, and mindful also of the gradually developing, largely habituated character of the love that truly binds men and women. Just as it is unsafe in political society to tmst the care of professedly natural rulers, so it is unwise to rest one’s hopes for the stability of marriage upon the notoriously errant sentiment of romantic love.58 Locke’s naturalistic, utilitarian reduction of marriage to “conjugal society” along with his lightly comedic observations concerning the causes that “drive” men into the enjoyments of conjugal life signifies a determination to maintain the primary grounding of marriage in natural necessity of one form or another. His conception of marriage as a mixture of necessity and choice, grounded primarily in the necessity of procreation and secondarily in the desires for comfort and affection, is of a piece with his general, realistic conception of the human condi¬ tion of “mediocrity.” From the Lockean perspective, the romantic notion of marriage as grounded primarily or exclusively in eros would seem to reflect a naive and destructive presumption that nature provides for us by producing an¬ other with whom we are perfectly paired. In this romantic view of nature’s benefi¬ cence, what Locke holds to be a natural tension between individuality and sociality disappears, encouraging the radicalization of the demands of both individuals and societies. The apparent beneficence of nature then reveals itself ultimately to be a maleficence, whereby we are lured into a lifelong, inevitably frustrated search for the perfect One.59 The destructive effect of this may be visible in our own society in recent decades, as the romanticizing of marriage, or the insistence upon judging it by an elevated standard of personal fulfillment, seems to have contrib¬ uted to a romanticizing of divorce.60 In the Lockean view, by contrast, in marital

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as in political society, a cognizance of the inherent weakness of human construc¬ tions and a patience for “all the slips of humane frailty” are indispensable (11.22425). In marriage as in life in general, Locke (following Montaigne) counsels, the pursuance of the summum bonum is debilitating and thus unreasonable. The achievement of happiness requires first the moderation, the reasonable regulation, of the desire for happiness.

The Constitution of Government In Locke’s clear, emphatic formulation of the distinction, parental power arises from the natural incapacity of children and is therefore limited to their education, whereas political power arises from the consent of, and is limited to preserving the properties of, presumptively rational adults (11.170-71, 173). This clear distinction between political and parental power thus depends upon a clear distinc¬ tion between adults and children. Here as elsewhere, however, Locke tends to overstate the strictness of his distinctions in their summary formulations. Just as the boundary dividing actual adults and children is difficult to discern precisely, so these two forms of power appear to overlap considerably in practice. We have seen that the function of the family in Locke’s design is not strictly confined to the education of children. We shall now see likewise that the function of government is not strictly confined to the preservation of adults’ properties—or better, that the governmental end of preserving adults’ properties must be understood to require the exercise of a measure of pedagogical power even over adults. Locke’s establishment of government upon the principle of presumptive ratio¬ nality does not foreclose the designing of governmental institutions to reinforce the pedagogical effects of private institutions. There is an element of oversimplifica¬ tion in his observation that politics comprises “two parts very different the one from the other,” as well as in the suggestion that the exclusive concern of the Two Treatises is “the original of societies and the rise and extent of political power” rather than “the art of governing men in society.”61 Likewise, there is an element of oversimplification or rhetorical diversion in Locke’s prominent identification in the Second Treatise of “the great art of government” with the art or science of political economy, “the increase of lands and the right employing of them” (42).62 In fact, one can learn much of importance concerning the Lockean art of govern¬ ment from the Second Treatise's discussion of the origin and extent of political power, and much of what one can learn concerns not political economy, but represents a continuation of Locke’s project in Some Thoughts Concerning Educa¬ tion. There is indeed a discernible pedagogical design, properly subtle in its approach, in the constitution of the Lockean government. This pedagogical design is manifest in both the “frame” and the ends of the Lockean government. So far as “the first and fundamental positive Law of all Commonwealths, is the establishing of the legislative Power” (11.134), the legislative power supplies a natural starting point for an analysis of the form of the Lockean government. Subject to certain important qualifications, the legislative power is the fundamental

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and supreme power of government in Locke’s design, the power that normally directs the usage of the other governmental powers (11.132, 134-36, 138, 143, 149-50). Further, the legislative power is constitutive not only of government but of political society itself: it is “the Soul that gives Form, Life, and Unity to the Commonwealth,” whereby “the several Members have their mutual Influence, Sympathy, and Connexion” (11.212). So I begin by considering the legislative power, and thereafter proceed to consider the relation of the legislative and executive powers in Locke’s design. With respect to the pedagogical significance of the legislative power in the Lockean government, I consider first its representa¬ tive form, and thereafter examine the nature of the legislative activity itself.

The Legislative Power: The Principle of Representation To perform properly its binding, unifying, formative function, the legislative power requires some distance from the members of the commonwealth. In contrast to Rousseau, Locke denies that the legislature must include all adult members of the community as direct participitants; the Lockean legislature is to exercise its consensual, fiduciary power as a representative body (11.94, 134, 138, 141-43, 154, 157-59, 222).63 The representative form of the Lockean legislature carries pedagogical significance in the general principle of representation, and in the specific characters of the classes or interests represented. In the general principle of representative government, as distinct from purely authoritarian as well as purely participatory government, one can see another important element of Locke’s design to moderate through intermixture the oppos¬ ing “humors” or desires that tend to generate social and political class divisions. In part, the pedagogical effect of representation is inseparable from that of the principle of popular consent. Locke holds that representation is the most effective means for institutionalizing the consent that is the indispensable basis of civil government. Consent is the condition of civil liberty, the means whereby liberty is preserved in the transition from the state of nature to political society (11.22). As we have seen, Locke sometimes presents liberty, and therefore consent, as necessary means to the primary end of preservation. Because the wills of others are ultimately opaque to us and (to say the least) cannot be presumed to harbor a reliable concern for our preservation (11.22), a rational individual must retain at least that measure of independent self-government that inheres in the right of consent. Therefore Locke insists that usurpation as well as tyranny proper—the mere misappropriation of governmental power as well as its actual abuse—must be judged sufficient to effect the dissolution of government (11.197-98, 212-18). Yet as Mansfield points out, a seriousness about consent or liberty even as a means to preservation requires that it be treated in practice as an end in itself.64 Because the defense of freedom and its associated forms may pose occasional risks to one’s personal security, the right of consent must be affirmed as an independent source of pride or dignity, capable of inspiriting the desire for preservation. In some of the rhetoric of the Two Treatises, one can see Locke’s attempt to cultivate

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passions and sentiments suitable for this purpose, as he seeks to raise in his readers a proud contempt for the condition of slavery—slavery is to be regarded first as a “vile,” then as a “miserable” estate (1.1; cf. 11.23, 163, 239)—and a righteous indignation and even hatred for the wielders and seekers of absolute, arbitrary power (epigraph, II. 10, 11, 16, 93, 172, 181, 228). But this rhetoric requires the support of institutionalized practice. The institution of a representative legislature gives regular effect to the principled subordination of the fiduciary legislative power to the rightful power of the people, as the electorate’s power to remove their representatives and thereby to subject them to the laws that they have made signifies “a new and near tie upon them, to take care, that they make them for the publick good” (II. 149, 143). In a well-ordered commonwealth, the practice of representation can provide an invigorating semblance of self-government for a populace that may be spontaneously inclined toward submissiveness. Through the periodic assertion of their own sovereign independence in the exercise of a power akin to the monarch’s power to negate the will of the legislature, the people may come to feel some measure of the monarch’s pride. It bears emphasis, however, that the practice of representation in Locke’s design provides no more than a semblance of self-government and a moderate portion of pride. Just as it is necessary to expand or invigorate the popular desire for self-preservation, so it is necessary to moderate or civilize the opposite humor, the desire to rule. The need to moderate the desire to rule comprehends even the desire for communal self-rule. The principle of representation in Locke occupies a stable middle ground between the extremes of elitist authoritarianism and direct, participatory democracy. It stands among the signal achievements of Lockean liberalism, articulated effectively in The Federalist as well as in the Two Treatises, to persuade modem societies to believe themselves self-governing by virtue of their power to elect representatives to govern them. Or perhaps it is better to say that in Locke’s judgment, the achievement of our proper measure of independence or self-government requires a depreciation of political activity and a circumscrip¬ tion of public life relative to the practice of classical republicanism. The practice of representation reflects and fosters a desire rather to deputize someone than to participate directly in public life. It is significant that Locke, like Hobbes, consis¬ tently avoids using the term “citizens” to denominate the individuals who compose the commonwealth he designs, referring to them only as “subjects” or “mem¬ bers.” Public life in this view is subordinate to private life. Government functions most visibly as a means to protect private interests and liberties. Thus Locke’s conception of laws primarily as “fences” may be revealingly compared as well as contrasted with Hobbes’s more restrictive characterization of the laws as “Artificiall Chains.”65 Locke’s alternative metaphor clearly signifies a more expansive defense of human freedom, but the fundamentally defensive purpose of the law is the same in the two thinkers. Locke’s legal fences are erected to demarcate the boundaries of our properties and to protect those properties against others. The association of representation with the diminution of the dignity or inde¬ pendent worth of political life calls into question the motives of the representatives

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themselves. One may wonder whether, in moderating and redirecting the desire to rule, Locke defends the cause of civil government against the grand injustices threatened by tyrannical ambitions, at the cost of exposing it to the petty injustices that reflect more common corruptions. As previously noted, in a private communi¬ cation to his friend Edward Clarke, Locke expresses a hope that “the zeale and forwardness of you your selves [i.e., the House of Commons] makes it needlesse for us without dores soe much as to thinke of the publique which is the happyest state a country can be in, when those whose businesse it is, take such care of affairs that all others quietly and with resignation acquiesce and thinke it superflu¬ ous and impertinent to medle or beat their heads about them” (C/L #1326, 10/17/1690). To conceive of public life as a mere means to the securing of private happiness is in effect to consign public life to the realm of necessity. For Locke as for Madison, government is to be viewed as a necessary evil, “the greatest of all reflections on human nature” or on “the corruption, and vitiousness of degen¬ erate Men” (Federalist #51; 7TII.128). So one must wonder what motivates the representatives in a Lockean commonwealth to choose the profession of public service, thereby committing themselves to place the interests of the public higher, or at least no lower, than their own private interests. Does the impartiality that Locke demands of just governors (e.g., 7TII. 131) rest upon a notion of govern¬ ment, or even a psychological asceticism, that is fundamentally contrary to the spirit of Locke’s moral and political thought? To pose the question still more pointedly, one may wonder whether the Lockean subordination of public to private ends renders inevitable the capture of Lockean government by corrupt, purely private interests. As we have seen, to protect against the constant danger that their ambitions may be diverted from their proper course, Locke subjects the trustees of political power to regularized popular control in the form of elections. The subordination of public to private life means both that we commonly desire others to take care of the public’s interest for us, and that we need to devise mechanisms to ensure their rectitude in performing their office. In the same vein, Locke reminds all concerned parties of the ultimate right of popular resistance, so that the publica¬ tion of “this Doctrine of a Power in the People of providing for their safety a-new by a new Legislative” can serve as “the best fence against Rebellion, and the probablest means to hinder it” (11.226). Yet while Locke may rely ultimately upon this somewhat mechanistic, balance-of-powers principle to preserve the good faith of public officials, he does not rely exclusively upon it. He qualifies without contradicting the devaluation of public life that is central to his modem, liberalized republicanism. While clearly devalued relative to classical republican practice, public life in the Lockean design may yet offer sufficient attractions to the ambi¬ tious, so far as Locke succeeds in showing the coherence of their expansive desire with justice and the popular happiness. Locke teaches that with justice, the preser¬ vation and wise regulation of property, comes societal prosperity. And with prosperity comes the societal greatness, the exemplary strength and independence, that reflects shiningly upon the reputations of those responsible for promoting it

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(II. 1, 42). Here again Locke’s solution provides a model for The Federalist: induce the most ambitious and talented to public careers by suggesting the prospect of greatness and providing sufficient governmental power to achieve it, and control their exercise of that power (in part) by subjecting their performance to periodic popular judgments. Notwithstanding the devaluation and limitation of politics that the principle of representation signifies, therefore, it is not quite accurate to say that Lockean government eschews moral pedagogy, limiting itself to the preservation of prop¬ erty. It is better to say that the fundamental defensiveness of Lockean government carries its own pedagogical lesson, as the Lockean government teaches private responsibility and calls its subjects to vigilance by means of its commitment to forbearance. The institution of representation contributes to Locke’s larger design to teach us reasonableness in the classically liberal manner of helping us to moder¬ ate our expectations with respect to the happiness that is to be found in political life and the virtue that is to be found in our officers of government. And it teaches us reasonableness in defense also against the opposite extreme, by counteracting the more characteristically modem forms of escapism. By allowing space for the pursuance of legitimate, salutary forms of eminence, it helps us to moderate the liberationism anti-elitist, anti-authoritarian, and even antipolitical enthusiasms from which modem, individualist, and egalitarian societies tend to suffer.

The Legislative Power: Lockean Representation The specific character of representation in Locke’s constitutional design carries similar pedagogical significance. Here one can gain some insight into the signifi¬ cance of Locke’s scheme of representation by considering first two important sorts of qualities that the Lockean legislature is not designed to represent. Most gener¬ ally, the legislature and the government as a whole represent the people from whom they derive their authority, but “the people” as a collectivity is not to be understood as a natural, prepolitical union.66 Although the fact of political divi¬ sions proceeds from natural necessity—from human cormption and viciousness, Locke suggests (11.128; cf. 11.14)—the determination of the specific boundaries that divide peoples is largely arbitrary, and the boundaries themselves historically fluid. Thus Locke states categorically that “Where-ever . . . any number of Men are so united into one Society” as to surrender their natural executive powers, “there and there only is a Political, or Civil Society” (11.89; emphasis partly supplied). He subsequently observes with approval that it “seldom happens, that . . . Conquerors and Conquered never incorporate into one People, under the same Laws and Freedom,” with the implication that the free consent of a con¬ quered people to a benign conqueror suffices to establish the legitimacy of the government of the latter, irrespective of considerations of nationality (11.178). This is not to characterize Locke as an extreme or naive cosmopolitan. As appears in his introductory praise of the “generous Temper and Courage” of the English nation (1.1), Locke acknowledges the need to moderate or familiarize the

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universalist rationalism of his argument for civil government with scattered appeals to more particularistic, patriotic sentiments. But it is an enlightened patriotism to which Locke appeals. We must remain mindful of the danger of uncritical self-extension, of forming or continuing associations as an errant, precipitant response to the uneasiness of our natural condition. We must face forthrightly the fact that neither nature nor any other superhuman force provides for us our societal affiliations, any more than it provides our governments. The “mutual Influence, Sympathy, and Connexion” that bind the members of a Lock¬ ean commonwealth must represent their union in a legislative will, established by their own rational consent (II.212).67 This evident abstraction from national or ethnic affiliations is closely related to Locke’s abstraction from sectarian religious qualification in his scheme of representation. In these respects, Locke’s legislative design reflects a classically liberal wariness of the dangers of partisan contentiousness posed by subrational and suprarational identifications. A well-designed legislative, for Locke, repre¬ sents and reinforces the rational will of the community. Yet Locke’s legislative design reflects also an equally powerful sensitivity to the potential for dangerous partisanship inherent in the faculty of reason itself. In his relatively brief treatment of the subject, and in contrast to the powerful rationalist alternatives presented in works such as Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Politics, Locke ascribes no special philosophic significance to the variety of governmental forms, which are deter¬ mined according to the assignment of the legislative power (11.132). He offers no real comparative analysis of the various regimes or constitutional forms, and he stages no dialectical confrontation among the various claimants to political or legislative power, because for Locke the variety of forms does not correspond to a variety of governmental ends. This is consistent with his strategy of devaluing political life. It is unreasonable and dangerous, in Locke’s view, to treat political life as a forum for waging interminable, contentious, and ultimately debilitating debates about the nature of justice or of the highest human good. Evidently fearing that the legislative representation of partisan opinions as such will not facilitate their ascent to reasonableness, but will instead flatter them and thus exacerbate their irrationality, Locke endeavors to establish political society on nonpartisan grounds. To the degree that it can be said to represent opinions, the Lockean government represents first and foremost a single opinion, a fundamental consen¬ sus. The ends of government are common to all forms of government; and the forms of government, so far as they are consistent with the requirement of popular consent, are to be regarded as mere means to the ends.68 The great questions of political philosophy, concerning the natures of justice and happiness and their relation to one another, thus appear more settled in Locke’s political thought than in that of any of the representatives of classical rationalism. At minimum, Locke finds lesser political and pedagogical worth in publicly arguing through the alternatives than do his classical predecessors. It seems that in representing fundamentally a single, consensual doctrine of justice rather than two or more alternative, mutually correcting partial opinions, Locke’s

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rationalist constitutionalism would represent reason’s conclusions rather than reasoned arguments. One may therefore wonder whether its effect is merely to counteract one form of rationalist enthusiasm by instituting another, more confi¬ dent and dogmatic, less self-conscious form. More specifically, one may question whether, so far as it proceeds from the seemingly settled premises of equal rights, consensual government, and presumptive rationality, Locke’s own profession of political rationalism reveals itself under scrutiny to be a rather thinly disguised statement of egalitarian partisanship, advanced in opposition to the various inegalitarian partisanships prevailing in premodem ages. There is an element of truth in this charge. Relative to the alternatives pre¬ sented in classical political philosophy, Locke’s constitutional scheme effects a clear narrowing of the terms of political debate. Yet alongside his expressions of dogmatism or partisanship, it is necessary to recall Locke’s insistence in the Essay that no moral principles should be regarded as simply unquestionable (1.3.4; 4.12.4), as well as the evidence presented at the conclusion of the preceding chapter indicating Locke’s clear qualifications of the principle of presumptive equal rationality. It is therefore safest to proceed from the premise that the parti¬ san dogmatism that characterizes Locke’s constitutionalism is strategic or peda¬ gogical in nature. The justification of this basic premise, however, and of Locke’s egalitarianism against more aristocratic alternatives, begins to appear in the course of a more specific discussion of the nature of the Lockean scheme of representa¬ tion. For it does not suffice to say simply that the Lockean legislative is to repre¬ sent a public consensus on the protection and promotion of personal property and on the communal conditions of happiness for all. Albeit within the relatively narrow confines of a constitutional order devoted to the cause of preservation-inliberty or rational self-government, Locke’s scheme of representation is designed to give voice to opposing sides of a certain partisan division. Within relatively narrow confines, it seems, a measure of partisan tension is useful for the promo¬ tion and preservation of rational liberty. Locke indicates the general nature of this partisan division in his brief discus¬ sion in the Second Treatise of the specific topic of legislative representation. He presents this discussion as a tangent of his more general discussion of legislativeexecutive relations. Allowing that the executive may reapportion the legislature when the “constant. . . Flux” of earthly things has corrupted the latter’s represen¬ tativeness, Locke comes to consider what principles would serve as the measures of a fair and equal representation (11.157-58). He declares it absurd to follow customary apportionment when the effect is that “the bare Name of a Town, of which there remains not so much as the mines, where scarce so much Housing as a Sheep-coat; or more Inhabitants than a Shepherd is to be found, sends as many Representatives to the grand Assembly of Law-makers, as a whole County numer¬ ous in people, and powerful in riches” (157). So it appears that representatives are to be apportioned in the Lockean legislature on the bases of population size and wealth. Despite the relative brevity of Locke’s discussion as well as the seemingly offhanded, occasional character of its presentation, through a further consideration

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of the specific claims to legislative power these two criteria are to represent, one comes to see that the origin of the partisan division in the Lockean legislature lies in the very heart of Locke’s theory of justice or political legitimacy. Most generally, this partisan division reflects a twofold imperative inherent in the pedagogical cause of promoting rational self-government. To advance that cause, Locke finds it necessary both to affirm the presumption of equal rational personhood and to acknowledge the limited historical justification and the dangers of that presumption. It is necessary to affirm the presumption of equal rationality or adult personhood in large part due to the overriding danger of the alternative. In practice, to reject this presumption means to require as a condition of full membership in political society some serious, positive demonstration of our capacity to govern ourselves and to consent to our governance by others. It there¬ fore means to apply to relations among adults the principle that governs relations between adults and children, that the more or sufficiently rational have a right to govern the less rational. Although he acknowledges that11 Age or virtue may give men a just precedency: Excellency of parts and merit may place others above the common level,” Locke steadfastly refuses to recognize any natural right to politi¬ cal power (11.54). This refusal arises mainly from the observation, noted above, that few if any others, however rational, can be presumed to harbor a concern for my preservation and well-being equal to or greater than my own (11.22). It arises also from a related concern, rooted in Locke’s wariness of the harmful effects of the mind’s illusion of its natural providedness, that the principle of the natural right of the fully rational to political office would provide fertile soil for a form of priestcraft, nourishing the desire to rule and thus hindering the development of full rationality in those with the potential for it. But a related and equally serious danger inheres also in the doctrine of pre¬ sumptive rationality. Although the presumption of adult rationality may be useful and even necessary for self-protection, it can be itself harmful so far as it fosters a mentality of entitlement. If we presume that the rights of personhood simply grow naturally within us, as spontaneous fruits of the process of aging, we sever all connection between rights and the industry or achievement whereby we prove ourselves worthy of them. The conception of rights as presumptive entitlements thus fosters a disrespect for and even an active resentment of achievement- or merit-based claims. The debilitating effects of this principle, left unchallenged or uncorrected by any alternative principle, are easy to see. If we are to consider ourselves entitled to the rights or advantages that pertain to the virtue of rational¬ ity, irrespective of any effort on our part to cultivate that virtue, then why should we not consider ourselves equally entitled to the rights or advantages that pertain to the virtue of industry, or to that of temperance or justice or any other virtue? Absent industry, of course, there is no wealth for anyone to enjoy; and absent any effort to cultivate rationality and justice, there is no rational community under law with a representative government in which one may claim a share. If the principle of rational self-government must moderate the claims that flatter ambition, it must also moderate those that level it.

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For this fundamental reason Locke respects the claims to representation of both the principle of presumptive rationality and the labor theory of property, including property in oneself. In acknowledging the legitimacy of claims based on sheer population size, Locke respects the presumptive right of adults to a share in their own governance. And by acknowledging the legitimacy of claims based on wealth, Locke respects the claim of productive industry, and by implication the more general claim of effortful achievement, that wealth signifies. No doubt the posses¬ sion of wealth, like any other manifestation of worldly success, is an imperfect signifier of effort or virtue. But to honor and protect it through political represen¬ tation is the nearest means to honoring and protecting the virtue of productive industry—virtue in a broadly accessible form, and in a form that is vitally impor¬ tant for the achievement of responsible personhood. Thus within the horizon of Locke’s partisan constitutional order, based upon the egalitarian principles of natural human rights and government by consent, a certain narrowed division between an egalitarian claim and a mixed aristocratic and oligarchic claim to representation reappears. In this the Lockean order resem¬ bles the modem democratic form that Tocqueville describes as harboring two forms of egalitarian passion, one more purely democratic or egalitarian and the other leavened by a lingering, albeit much domesticated, aristocratic pride. Al¬ though Tocqueville, like Locke, affirms the fundamental justice of the egalitarian principle, he is more rhetorically direct than Locke in warning against the debase¬ ment of that principle in the form of the levelling passion.69 But the difference is more rhetorical than substantive. In the immediate sequel to the paragraph in which he somewhat casually endorses a scheme of representation by the criteria of numbers and wealth, Locke more directly declares the “true proportion,” grounded in “true reason,” whereby legislative representatives should be appor¬ tioned. “No part of the People however incorporated can pretend to” a right to representation, Locke holds, “but in proportion to the assistance, which it affords to the publick” (II. 158). Interpreting the term “assistance ... to the publick” as a reference to taxes, some commentators view this statement as evidence of the ultimately oligarchic character of Locke’s constitutional order.70 And indeed it is evident that in this sequel, Locke refines or clarifies his account of representation by effectively rejecting claims of pure, status-based entitlement. As we have seen, although some fundamental rights are proper to human nature, according to Locke, human¬ ity itself is to be conceived of less as a natively given status than as an achieve¬ ment or activity, the object of ongoing laborious endeavor. The true principle therefore grounds representation not in natural entitlement, but in the activities whereby claimants contribute to the commonwealth’s well-being and thus demon¬ strate their own responsibility. But this emphasis on activity and achievement does not signify any decisively oligarchic commitment on Locke’s part. The assistance to the public upon which Locke insists surely refers in part to the payment of taxes upon one’s estate (11.140). But there is no reason to take this as the exclusive meaning, or to conclude that having endorsed representation based in part upon

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population size in the preceding paragraph, Locke proceeds immediately to with¬ draw this endorsement without explanation. One should not ascribe to Locke the supposition that taxpayers are wealthy, so that representation based on taxation would necessarily exclude the poor.71 Moreover, one should consider the alterna¬ tive contributions to public well-being that those without estate or taxable property might make to justify their claim to representation. Because Locke is inexplicit on this point, this consideration remains somewhat conjectural. Two alternatives appear plausible. First, to promote rational industry, it is necessary to protect opportunity as well as achievement. In Locke as in Machiavelli, the conception of virtue as revealed largely in its effects does not entail a slavish approbation of success. It is therefore reasonable for Locke to provide some means for the majority of laborers or potential entrepreneurs to protect themselves against attempts by the already successful to convert their achieve¬ ments into exclusionary or even exploitive privileges (see 1.41-43), just as it is reasonable for him to provide some means for the successful to protect the fruits of their industry against redistributive schemes aimed at benefiting the nonindustrious. In this view, by providing for representation on the basis of numbers as well as wealth, Locke broadens the honor and protection accorded to the contri¬ bution of productive industry. He thus includes not only those whose productive labor has resulted in the present accumulation of substantial wealth but also those whose labor might do so in the future, along with the more numerous whose labor returns only a modest living yet constitutes an indispensable contribution to the commonwealth’s general prosperity. Second, it seems likely that the contribution that Locke expects of the “nu¬ merous” may take the form of military service, where needed, as well as produc¬ tive labor. Wary of the danger of raising a spirit of martial enthusiasm, Locke places no thematic emphasis on the duty of military service. He does imply, however, that such service is included in the general service that each owes to his country (STCE “Epistle Dedicatory”). The “first and fundamental Natural Law” of all commonwealths “is the preservation of the Society.” Although Locke stresses that this law is to govern the legislative itself (7TII.134), it surely does not apply exclusively to the legislative power or the government in general. Ultimately, the preservation of the society depends upon the preservation of its armed forces (11.139). Having authorized the society or its legislative power “to make Laws for him as the publick good of the Society shall require” (11.89), the individual member of the Lockean commonwealth has certainly authorized the legislature to require military service of him. Viewed from this perspective, the Lockean representation of numbers and wealth signifies a proper reward for contributions to the community's security and prosperity, or to its defense against the recurrent dangers posed by human nature and by nature in general. As the argument of the Second Treatise unfolds, Locke does not renounce but rather refines the egalitarian principle of presumptive adult rationality that serves as a premise of his account of the construction of political society. Properly understood, the presumption of adult rationality is a rebuttable

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presumption that those beyond the age of minority will act in such manner as to merit the rights proper to adulthood.

The Legislative Power: The Activity of Legislating Locke’s scheme of representation, in keeping with his more general account of the constitution of civil government, displays a characteristic mixture of theo¬ retical confidence and modesty. This mixture of theoretical confidence and mod¬ esty appears not only in the constitutional form, but also, in a more complex, still more fundamentally revealing manner, in the activity proper to the Lockean legislature. As the federative power predominant in early, monarchic governments was bom of the need to settle conflicts among societies, so the legislative power that predominates in truly civil societies arises in response to the need to resolve conflicts internal to those societies. In Locke’s historical account, the federative stage of governmental development gradually exposes the need for a successor stage of legislative predominance, as the process wherein “the stronger, or more fortunate [societies] swallowed the weaker” (11.115) effects the formation of societies rent by sharper internal divisions than those present in earlier tribal or familial monarchies.72 In any event, civil government and the legislative power in particular come to sight as creatures of necessity, instituted to serve as “a Judge on Earth, with Authority to determine all the Controversies, and redress the Injuries, that may happen to any Member of the Commonwealth” (11.89; cf. II. 13, 87-91, 124-28). As Aristotle shows, the proposition that government originates in necessity is perfectly compatible with a teleological understanding of government’s ultimate function. The legislative power that originates out of the need to adjudicate contro¬ versies could develop into the institutional exemplar of deliberative reason, if the controversies in question are such as to stimulate its reflection on the political and human good. Locke may seem to incorporate something like this conception of legislative power into his constitutional design, in charging the legislature with the task of formulating laws based upon a mature deliberation concerning the public good (e.g., 11.135, 142, 156). Here again, however, the difference is more telling than the similarity. Locke’s insistence that the communal and then governmental legislative power is to be conceived of first and foremost as a judge is of a piece with his denial that the open-ended inquiry into the good that epitomizes the philosophy “of old” (ECHU 2.21.55) can serve as a proper model for legislative deliberations. Because the general nature of the public good is known, the activity of judgment that Locke ascribes to the legislative power cannot involve any ultimately philosophic exploration, but must consist only of the subordinate activity of interpreting the given, antecedently discovered law, the “law” of equal natural rights. The “Municipal Laws of Countries ... are only so far right, as they are founded on the Law of Nature, by which they are to be regulated and interpreted” (7TII.12; cf. 11.135). More precisely stated, the adjudicative activity

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of the legislative power, in Locke’s design, is to supply the grounds for resolving domestic controversies by formulating general societal rules that are themselves particularizations of the still more general laws of nature. Thus Locke highlights the element of modesty in his conception of the legisla¬ tive power as judge, subordinating its will to the dictates of a higher law. One may question, however, whether this apparent modesty functions in fact as an ingratiat¬ ing disguise for a profound theoretical confidence. For critics such as Montesquieu and Burke, there is a dangerous immodesty in the attempt to ground a political society directly in universal, transpartisan principles of natural right. The modem natural-rights movement reflects a potentially tyrannical disregard of the signifi¬ cance of historical particularity, and therewith of the need for prudential rational¬ ity, in political life. Yet, although such criticisms can surely find proper targets in the extremism of the French Revolution and even in the doctrinaire polemics of the likes of Thomas Paine, they are not justly directed against Locke. It is undeniable, of course, that Locke builds upon the foundation of universal natural rights. Such a mode of construction is recommended by his observation of the natural weakness of human reason—as manifested especially in the mind’s strong desire for doctrinal foundations and the consequent promiscuous restless¬ ness with which it espouses moral principles (ECHU 1.3.24; 7TI.58). It is signifi¬ cant that Locke insists upon the questionableness of all moral rules not in the Two Treatises, an explicitly “civil” discourse (11.52; cf. ECHU 3.9.3), but only in the Essay, a work he describes with ironic modesty as “fitted to Men of my own size (“Epistle to the Reader,” 8; 1.3.4; 4.12.4). But by his employment of purportedly self-evident or demonstrative principles as the foundation—or in Lincoln’s meta¬ phor, as the “sheet anchor”73—of liberal republicanism, Locke means to guide and stabilize, not to conclude our moral and political reasoning. Although he maintains that the primary concern of his political writings is to clarify the science—the “original, extent, and end”—of political power, not to elaborate the art of govern¬ ment, his principled formulations of the general purpose or purposes of political power already incorporate a degree of interplay between science and art. At the most general level, the twofold end of securing property or personal rights and the public good indicates Locke’s resistance to political doctrinairism. By incorporat¬ ing into the rule of rights itself an acknowledgment of its exceptions, necessitated by the limits of the possible as well as the claims of the public good, Locke displays a measure of prudence in his understanding of the purpose of political power that prepares the further exercise of prudence at different levels of legisla¬ tive activity (7TII.1, 6, 134, 159, 183, 229). Specifically, Locke leaves space for prudential judgment at two further levels of legislation, as well as in his more general understanding of the nature of legisla¬ tive as opposed to executive activity. Locke is certainly less interested than Montesquieu in analyzing and offering detailed guidance for the legislative reason¬ ings of various societies, and this relatively narrow focus seems to proceed not only from the need to address the pressing problems of England but also, as we saw in chapter four, from his seemingly greater estimate of the power of irrational

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forces in determining various societies’ political and cultural forms. Yet as Montesquieu is less relativist than he sometimes appears, so Locke is less dog¬ matic. At the level of constitutional legislation, Locke’s brief, reductive, Machia¬ vellian treatment of the forms of government as mere means to a common end does not entail the dogmatic conclusion that the law of nature universally pre¬ scribes any single constitutional form. He clearly holds that in optimal conditions, wherein the mass of ordinary members of the society are sufficiently enlightened and spirited to understand and to defend their rights, a representative government with divided, mutually checking powers is the best means for promoting the cause of rational liberty. Cognizant of the special needs of communities under nonoptimal conditions, however, Locke leaves it to the prudence of particular communi¬ ties to choose in their fundamental legislative act whether their government shall take the form of a democracy, an aristocracy, a hereditary or elective monarchy, or some mixture of these elements (11.132). Ruling out only absolute (and arbi¬ trary) monarchy as “no Form of Civil government at all” (11.90), Locke explicitly affirms the provisional legitimacy, for instance, of the paternal monarchies that arise as the “easie, and almost natural” solution of the problems characteristic of primitive societies (11.75; cf. 11.105, 107-11). There is surely a significant difference in tone between Locke’s historical account of legislative constructions and Montesquieu’s generous observation that “amidst the infinite diversity of laws and mores, [men] were not led by their fancies alone.”74 Yet although Montesquieu takes greater pains than does Locke to uncover or to provide a generous assessment of the reasonableness of diverse legislative provisions in diverse cultural conditions, it is more telling that in the end Montesquieu, much like Locke, presents a single constitution, based upon the constitution of England, as the model for societies devoted to the cause of rational liberty.75 With respect to the ordinary acts of a duly constituted legislative power, Locke provides still less specific guidance than he does concerning the choice of constitu¬ tional form. Here again, however, his relatively taciturn presentation reflects a deference to, not a foreclosure of, legislative prudence. Having declared near the beginning of the Second Treatise that positive laws may claim legitimacy only so far as they are “founded on the Law of Nature, by which they are to be regulated and interpreted, ” Locke proceeds later in the same work to clarify the meaning of this requirement. “The Rules that [legislators] make for other Mens Actions,” he explains in his discussion of the extent of the legislative power, need not be strictly determined by or derived from the higher law. That such rules are to be regulated by the law of nature means only that they must be “conformable to” it, or not contradict it (cf. II. 12 with II. 135). This standard of noncontradiction again allows some considerable space for particularized judgment in the framing of positive laws, and it points to a further important aspect of Locke’s understanding of prudence. While the resistance to arbitrariness—not to say, a proper under¬ standing of the nature of things—requires that legislative activity be understood fundamentally as judgment, grounded in the law of nature, Locke acknowledges

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that legislative judgment cannot entirely purify itself from the taint of arbitrari¬ ness. To conceive of the framing of positive laws as the direct discernment of the mandate of the law of nature in particular circumstances—to insist upon finding the one best law, the one law most needful in the circumstances—would be to succumb once again to the lure of perfectionism, in a form hardly less contentious and ultimately debilitating than the quest for the human summum bonum. This accounts for the measure of ambiguity in Locke’s descriptions of legislative activity: while legislation proper is fundamentally a form of judgment, it rests also upon a right of making laws (II.3; cf. II. 124). Like the formation of species ideas, the framing of laws rests upon a partly natural, partly conventional basis. In sum, legislative activity in Locke’s design serves as an exemplar of rational¬ ity not mainly via a deliberation on the nature of the public or human good, but rather in its less direct reasoning concerning the conditions of rational liberty. It represents an exercise in moderated rationalism. Because in our natural condition of “mediocrity” we live neither entirely by a strict rule nor entirely without one, in legislating as in thinking in general, good judgment requires a healthy respect for the power, and for the limits of the power, of the faculty of judgment. The moderation of legislative reasoning in Locke appears in its mixture or balancing of the activities of judging and making. The assimilation of legislating to judging is fundamentally moderate in its subordination of legislative will to the dictates of a higher, rationally apprehended law, yet it carries a germ of immoderation in its potential for doctrinairism and perfectionism. The assimilation of legislating to making, on the other hand, is fundamentally immoderate in its reduction of law to an expression of a creative, arbitrary will, yet contains a measure of moderation in its acknowledgment of a degree of conventionalism or arbitrariness inherent in human affairs. By conceiving of legislating as a sort of compound whose major part is judging and whose minor part is making, Locke takes advantage of the virtues and checks the vices inherent in each of these simpler conceptions. The legislative power is thus to exemplify a rational moderation by virtue of its under¬ standing of its own activity as well as its representative structure. Locke’s attempt to teach rational moderation by means of his constitutional design appears not only in his conception of legislative power but also in his account of the relations between legislative and executive powers.

The Division of Powers: Legislative and Executive In “the Infancy of Governments,” Locke observes, “the Government was almost all Prerogative,” as the members of tribal societies tacitly chose “to be under the Conduct of a single Person, without so much as by express Conditions limiting or regulating his Power, which they thought safe enough in his Honesty and Prudence” (11.162, 112). Yet, despite the doctrine of Hobbes, subsequent experience clearly shows that the dangers of the state of nature cannot be dispelled by individuals’ mere transfer of their natural power to a sovereign individual or community.76 Such a “negligent” and “unforeseeing” grant of unlimited, irrespon-

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sible power brings about only a modified and potentially more dangerous state of nature (11.93-94, 107, 111, 137). The true remedy for the dangers of the state of nature is civil government; and the hallmark of all “well-framed,” truly civil governments is the division or separation of legislative and executive powers (11.159, 143-44). This doctrine appears, of course, quite familiar to us. For this reason especially, it is advisable for us to reconsider Locke’s understanding of its true basis and extent. As the preeminent danger of the state of nature is subjection to an absolute, arbitrary power, it would seem that the great object of civil government must be to eliminate or minimize merely personal, subjective, arbitrary power by subject¬ ing governors and governed alike to “settled standing Laws” or “stated Rules of Right and Property” (11.137). In well-constituted commonwealths, therefore, the legislative power is the “Supream Power” (11.149-50; cf. 11.134-36, 138). To force members of legislative assemblies to live under the laws that they enact, Locke insists that they be periodically dispersed, if not subjected to regular elec¬ tions. Similarly, to preserve the law’s impartiality or generality in formulation and application, he insists that the powers to make and to execute laws be located in distinct offices, provided, once again, that the subordination of executive to legislative be clearly understood: the legislative power contains “a right to direct how the Force of the Commonwealth shall be imploy’d” (11.143). The fact that the rule of law entails both the supremacy of the legislative and the division of powers, however, points to a tension inherent in the principle of rule of law. If, as Locke declares at one point, the executive is to be clearly “Ministerial and subordinate” to the legislative power (II. 153), then the extent to which the executive is truly distinct from or independent of the legislative would seem quite limited. It would seem that the Lockean constitution thus reduces the executive to the status of a clerk—a “mere executor,” in Machiavelli’s usage, or a tool of another, higher authority.77 Yet the confinement of the legislative to its proper sphere, the making of general, impartial rules, requires that the executive possess a considerable degree of operational independence in applying those general rules to particular cases. The rule of law requires the executive to be by turns subordinate to and independent of the legislative. Accordingly, however emphatic his initial statements, Locke proceeds quickly to qualify his doctrine of legislative supremacy. He adds not only that “the Com¬ munity perpetually retains a Supream Power” to resist the unjust designs of legislators (II. 149) but also that the executive itself must be understood to possess an impressive degree of operational independence. Now proclaiming it the “Su¬ pream Executor of the Law” and even the “Supream Executive Power,” Locke proceeds to grant the executive a share in the “joint Power” of lawmaking (II. 15153, 222). He suggests that the executive may be safely granted the powers to convoke, dismiss, and reapportion the legislature (11.156-58); and most signifi¬ cantly, he invests in executives the power to act “of their own free choice, where the Law was silent, and sometimes too against the direct Letter of the Law, for the publick good” (II. 164).78 Having seemed to extirpate or to minimize executive

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prerogative, Locke thus reintroduces it within the constitution of civil government. As Paul Rahe observes, “it is remarkable just how much the English philosopher was willing to concede to Thomas Hobbes’s argument for one-man rule.”79 This reinstitution of prerogative power may represent in part a prudent or generous attempt to accommodate the monarchic passion or “humor” along with the democratic and oligarchic. Coming especially from so vigorous an antipatriarchalist, Locke’s rare and striking references to “godlike” princes (11.42, 165-66) could hardly fail to appeal to the highest aspirations of his boldest readers. More important than the attempt to accommodate divergent passions, however, is the attempt to accommodate, to sustain the virtues and to check the vices of, divergent modes of reason. To repeat, to overcome the danger of arbitrariness to which we are exposed in the state of nature, Locke insists upon the impersonal, impartial rule of law: “all private judgement of every particular Member being excluded, the Community comes to be Umpire, by settled standing Rules, indifferent, and the same to all Parties” (11.87). Yet although he places primary emphasis upon the danger inher¬ ent in Filmerian and Hobbesian absolutism, Locke sees with equal clarity the difficulties inherent in the extreme liberal-rationalist response. As it attempts to combat the enthusiasms bom of passion and superstition, reason must remain wary of its own enthusiasms, exemplified in the liberal aspiration to govern political life by purely impartial, general laws. While Locke allows, as we have seen, for an element of prudence in legislation, the pmdence that is manifest in the activity of the legislative power as he designs it is limited in scope and incomplete, deriving mainly from an acknowledgment of the impossibility of governing any particular society solely by laws applicable to all societies. What is further required is an acknowledgment of the incapacity of law as such to govern by itself any particular political society. In Locke’s example, were it necessary to tear down an innocent man’s house to prevent a next-door fire from spreading, “a strict and rigid obser¬ vation” of the law would represent a foolish and harmful legalism, contravening the public good as well as the broader spirit of the law protecting personal prop¬ erty (11.159). Moreover, an overzealous attempt to minimize partial or personal rule by means of a comprehensive system of legislation or bureaucratic regulation would exacerbate the very problem it aims to solve, as such a system of “intricate contrivances” would provide by its very complexity abundant opportunities for arbitrary or interested administration (11.12). Because “it is impossible to foresee, and so by laws to provide for, all Acci¬ dents and Necessities, that may concern the publick; or to make such Laws, as will do no harm, if they are Executed with an inflexible rigour . . . therefore there is a latitude left to the Executive power, to do many things of choice, which the Laws do not prescribe” (II. 160). To supply the defects of personal reason and thus protect political life against the whims, passions, and fancies of personal rulers, Locke holds the rule of law indispensable. But to check the enthusiasms of legisla¬ tive reason, Locke allows considerable space for executive discretion or prudence in the exercise of prerogative power. The division of legislative and executive

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powers in Locke’s constitution effects a balance not only of opposing passions but, more important, of science and art, of general and particular modes of reasoning. In this respect, the relation of legislative and executive powers further exemplifies Locke’s design to harmonize the claims of the many and the few, or the common and the distinctive, in a constitutional order devoted to the principle of rational liberty. Some suggestive observations concerning the relation between these two modes of reasoning appear in Locke’s discussion of the mind’s “discerning” faculty, the faculty “whereby it perceives two Ideas to be the same, or different,” in the Essay. Whereas “Wit” lies most in comparison, “in the assemblage of Ideas . . . wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity,” Locke observes, “Judg¬ ment” lies in the drawing of distinctions, “in separating carefully, one from another, Ideas, wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by Similitude.” In contrast to judgment, displays of wit, including the devices of “Metaphor and Allusion,” strike “lively on the Fancy,” and are “acceptable to all People; because [their] Beauty appears at first sight, and there is required no labour of thought” (2.11.1-2). This understanding of judgment, judgment as the perception of distinctions, is better suited to the exercise of executive than to that of legislative power as Locke conceives of it, and seems indeed to serve as a corrective of the legislative judgment described in the preced¬ ing section. The mode of reasoning that is attentive to distinction or difference is itself a distinctive mode of reasoning, more refined and difficult than that con¬ cerned with comparisons, rules, and generalities. But each mode is incomplete in itself, and in the context of Locke’s constitutional ordering in particular, a confu¬ sion of either part for the whole of political reasoning can create the conditions for a potentially dangerous extremism. Carried to its extreme, the common, legisla¬ tive mode degenerates into a dogmatic will to generalize, to provide for all partic¬ ular exigencies by means of a conclusive set of general rules and thus to eliminate any further need for independent thought. Carried to its own dogmatic extreme, however, the more distinctive mode of reasoning degenerates into a rationalization of lawlessness and ultimately into an assertion of sheer irrationalism, as its sensi¬ tivity to the distinctiveness of particular cases hardens into a paradoxical, nihilistic affirmation of particularity or idiosyncrasy as the one, exclusive, ruling principle of nature. Herein lies the deepest rationale for Locke’s division of governmental powers. By dividing the legislative and executive powers in this way, the Lockean constitu¬ tion reinforces the lesson of the state of nature, institutionalizing a reminder of the natural weakness or incompleteness of individual human reason. The power that is held undivided by individuals (including patriarchs and chieftains) in the state of nature must be divided in political society, because the reason of individuals that commonly supposes its wholeness is most often actually partial and selfdeceived. The reason that is adequate to govern us, that is capable of impartially judging the claims of the general and the particular or the many and the few or one, emerges more reliably from the interaction between two institutional powers

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than from the actions of a single individual or body. By virtue of its mutually complementary, mutually correcting interaction between legislative and executive powers and the modes of reasoning that they represent, the Lockean constitutional order once again teaches a moderate rationalism. The Popular Power of Resistance One final issue remains to be considered concerning Locke’s governmental constitution. The powers of government in Locke’s design are subject to external as well as internal checks. The “Doctrine of a Power in the People of providing for their safety a-new . . . when their Legislators have acted contrary to their trust ... is the best fence against Rebellion, and the probablest means to hinder it” (11.226). Although civil government requires the exclusion of all private judgment from the daily business of legislation and execution (11.87), it cannot rest upon the renunciation of the community’s right to judge and to enforce its judgment con¬ cerning the legitimacy of governmental actions. As Locke explains in the conclud¬ ing chapter of the Second Treatise, a popular judgment of governmental illegiti¬ macy means the reversion of governmental powers to the community, so that it may execute its judgment and reconstitute a government of laws. The potential difficulty in this lies, however, in the fact that the community thus exercises the powers of government in their natural, undivided form. Locke’s observations concerning the fragile rationality of many “whole Societies” (see ECHU 1.3.9-12) can suffice to indicate that natural or undivided governmental power is no less dangerous in the hands of communities than in those of individuals. It seems all the more necessary, then, that communities observe great prudence in the exercise of their natural powers of judgment and resistance. So the question arises whether Locke’s doctrine requires a degree of prudence on the part of communal majorities that in his own observation is possessed by only a very few individuals. To confine governments properly within the boundaries of their constitutional powers, Locke and the Lockean constitution must teach the subjects of those governments prudence in the exercise of their own extraconstitutional powers. This does not require that subjects master the art of government practiced by the best, most “godlike” princes, or the mixture of science and art employed by wise legislators. As they are excluded from the actual business of governing, the prudence proper to subjects is limited in scope and mainly reactive, consisting of the capacity to discern whether others are governing them well or adequately, and to choose their representatives (including, perhaps, the framers of new constitu¬ tions) accordingly. This popular form of prudence consists of an accessible mix¬ ture of reason and good sense. As we have seen, it is the aim of many of Locke’s pedagogical provisions to cultivate “the sence of rational Creatures” (11.230, emphasis supplied; cf. 11.94, 168, 225). Among the important desired effects of this pedagogy is that it becomes “as impossible for a Governor, if he really means the good of his People ... not to make them see and feel it; as it is for the Father

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of a Family, not to let his Children see he loves, and takes care of them” (11.209; emphasis supplied). This popular reliance upon educated feelings concerning governmental inten¬ tions80 comports with the cause of moderate rationalism. It reflects an appreciation that the protection of rights requires art as well as science and that the universal preservation of the rights of the innocent is not always possible. Thus it may be prudent for communities in some circumstances to consent to the governance of benign usurpers or conquerors (11.175, 178, 192), as it may be prudent for them, in the exercise of what they retain of their natural executive powers, to “pardon” or decline to prosecute inadvertent, relatively harmless, or isolated transgressions by their governors (11.210, 225). Perhaps ironically, the principle of individual self-ownership serves to strengthen members’ tolerance of purely individual harms to others, and thereby provides further support for popular prudence. In their critical reluctance to devote themselves to large causes beyond or unconnected to themselves, the rational, self-owning members of a Lockean commonwealth are generally and prudently unwilling to disturb their government in cases wherein the grievances of individuals do not portend more general negligence or wrongdoing (11.168, 209, 230). In brief, therefore, the exercise of prudence is neither ex¬ cluded from the Lockean constitutional order nor is it limited to legislative and executive officials. It is generalized, encouraged in subjects as well as governors, in keeping with Locke’s prudent understanding of the egalitarian doctrine that supplies the foundation of civil government.81

The Problem of the Intellectual Elite: Equality, Science, and Political Rationality By thus accommodating, harmonizing, and moderating the partial claims of the many and the few—the common and the distinctive, the general and the particular, the lovers of preservation or privacy and the ambitious—Locke hopes that his constitutional principles will not only bring peace but also forge a common, societal devotion to the cause of moderate, rational liberty. Yet one should not infer that Locke’s constitution effects or even attempts to effect a perfect balance or equal mixture of these opposing principles. Just as Jefferson’s generous decla¬ ration that “We are all republicans—we are federalists” became possible only in the wake of a sweeping Republican victory in the 1800 election, so Locke’s constitution represents a mixture of oligarchic and aristocratic elements with a fundamentally egalitarian base.82 Although Locke’s socialist or social-democratic critics express a reasonable concern in pointing to the danger of partisanship in the Lockean constitution,83 they err in contending that the most serious potential difficulties associated with Lockean liberalism derive from its oligarchic aspects rather than from its egalitarian base. As we have seen, the fundamental fact for Locke is not inequality in our capacities to acquire, nor even the more dramatic inequality that he observes in human intellectual capacities. However unequal we

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are in our knowledge of the substantive happiness that we all naturally pursue, the fundamental fact of common personhood governs the distribution of natural rights. Accordingly, the most serious danger lies in the possibility that Locke’s egalitari¬ anism effects a lowering of the standard of rationality to such a degree as ulti¬ mately to dissolve the respect for reason, among both the many and the few, upon which the health of political society depends. The fundamentally egalitarian character of the Lockean constitution, as well as the most serious danger it confronts, appears more clearly when one views that constitution in contrast with the general alternative prevailing in classical political science. In view of the classical alternative, with its aristocratic devotion to the cultivation of virtue and its forthright acceptance of the institutionalized inequali¬ ties that supply the preconditions for the serious pursuit of virtue, one sees more clearly the egalitarian spirit of Locke’s doctrine of natural rights, wherein he affirms an ultimately egalitarian right of judging and executing the principles of natural right and accords the principle of popular consent a weight equal to that of the possession of virtue or wisdom as a criterion for judging governmental legitimacy. In conjunction with his reasonable distillation of Christianity, Locke conceives of his doctrine of natural rights at least in part with a view toward minimizing or eliminating the need for a class of priestly interpreters.84 By means of this contrast, one sees similarly the significance of Locke’s replacement of the aristocratic concept of leisure with the more utilitarian or necessitarian concept of “recreation” (STCE 108, 206; CJL #328), befitting an ethic of industrious motion rather than one oriented toward contemplative rest. Most important, in contrast with the thematic prominence accorded the life of philosophy in the classical accounts, one is struck by the reticence or indirectness of Locke, who provides no explicit account of the specifically philosophical way of living, choosing rather to emphasize the predominantly utilitarian, technological inspiration of science. Acutely sensitive to the powerful desire for dominion and to the more common propensity toward partisan enthusiasm, Locke not only rationalizes religion but also sets forth, as Pangle observes, a civilized or “socialized” conception of rationality.85 The specific danger inherent in this socialized, egalitarian rationality is twofold. First, so far as Locke teaches reason to subordinate its peculiar imper¬ atives to the requirements of civility or social stability, he risks undermining reason’s capacity to stand in independent resistance to the tides of irrationalism that constantly threaten political societies. This aspect of the danger appears especially significant in light of the heavy emphasis that Locke places upon the pedagogical usefulness of the desire for esteem, again raising the question whether the Lockean gentry may tend to confuse rationality with respectability, or to value civility over the independence of spirit that makes justice as well as other forms of excellence possible.86 Second, in addition to the danger of middle-class conformism arises the ulti¬ mately more serious danger of rebelliousness or even nihilism in a portion of the upper class. Unless the Lockean society can establish a linkage between the common, industrious rationality that it publicly promotes and the higher, more

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truly self-possessing happiness accessible only to an austerely rational few, the latter are likely to experience their subjection to that society as alienating and unjust. So far as Locke seeks to smooth over reason’s divisiveness by presenting it as a mere means to the achievement of private security and comfort, he risks obscuring the grounds for the vital principle of the sovereign distinctiveness of reason within the human self or soul. Such a diminution of reason would seem to have particularly unsettling effects among society’s most ambitious and rationally adept members. If Locke abstracts too completely from the ultimate ends of rational action, he risks teaching the class most needful of a respect for reason that human liberty lies not in conformity to reason, but in the productions of the imagination or the assertions of the will. His attempt to advance the cause of reasonable, nonarbitrary government by means of a more egalitarian conception of rationality may therefore have the perverse effect of emboldening more extreme forms of willfulness than had ever appeared in the corrupted practical progeny of premodem political thought. In considering these dangers, Pangle contends that Locke attempts to further the cause of reason by liberating reason from the need to defend itself against its traditional—theological—antagonists.87 Yet, however “nettlesome” such antago¬ nists, Pangle argues, the recurring confrontation with various theological-political authorities is the indispensable condition of philosophic openness and thus of philosophy’s very existence. To appreciate the seriousness of this objection, one need not affirm Pangle’s contention that a certain softness of character, “an immoderate detestation of his necessarily embattled situation as a philosopher,” leads Locke to neglect the conditions required for the cultivation of reason. Locke’s divergence from classical political philosophy on this central point pro¬ ceeds less from personal passion or inattention than from a considered, empirically grounded rejection of the proposition that the imagination, in its longing to tran¬ scend the human condition of mortality, is, as Pangle puts it, “the natural partner of reason in the pursuit of the sublime.”88 Motivating Locke’s endorsement of an ostensibly doctrinaire egalitarianism is the reasonable conviction that premodem political science had failed to govern and even dangerously flattered the human imagination, whose enormous power and disorderliness render hopelessly intracta¬ ble the ancient problem of authenticating claims of wisdom to the unwise. None¬ theless, if an impmdently elevated conception of reason risks emboldening the will, so too does an excessively lowered one—and the latter more explicitly and thus more disarmingly than the former. Although we may reasonably share Locke’s doubts as to whether a culture of enchanted reverence is more apt to nourish the growth of philosophy, let alone of reasonable politics, than it is to generate fanaticism, we must yet explore the basis of Locke’s hope that his civi¬ lized, utilitarian rendering of reason can generate and sustain the degree of respect for reason that a healthy political society requires. As is implicit in his reconstructions of Christianity, the family, and govern¬ ment, Locke holds that the fostering of a healthy devotion to the life of rational liberty among the common majority requires first an assault on the barriers to

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popular rationality erected by ambitious, authoritarian elites. At the level of popular opinion and sentiment, Locke accordingly attempts to raise in support of the desired spirit of popular rational independence a measure of commonsense, pragmatic, anti-elitist, anti-intellectualist animus in regard to the wares of profes¬ sional vendors of ideas. This intention explains much of the vitriolic reductionism that Locke—evidently reaching the limit of the civility and tolerance that he recommends as conditions of membership in a Lockean commonwealth—deploys against the school philosophers, those willful purveyors of “artificial Ignorance, and learned Gibberish” and bringers of “Confusion, Disorder, and Uncertainty into the Affairs of Mankind” (ECHU 3.10.9, 12; 3.10.6-13). As in the Second Treatise the threat of armed resistance by a spirited, freedom-loving populace represents the “best Fence” against rebellious would-be tyrants (226), so in the Essay a commonsense suspicion that grand legislative moral visions function often as the decent drapery of baser interests serves to deter Locke’s audience from assenting to the domineering designs of a few partisans. In a similarly populist vein, Locke contends that society’s intellectual elites might well receive instruc¬ tion from the example of those occupied with the ordinary affairs of life, even of the ignorant or unschooled. Just as “ignorant Men . . . can more nicely distinguish [things] from their uses . . . than those learned quick-sighted Men, who look so deep into them,” so “Merchants and Lovers, Cooks and Taylors, have Words wherewithal to dispatch their ordinary Affairs; and so, I think, might Philosophers and Disputants too, if they had a Mind to understand, and to be clearly under¬ stood” (ECHU 3.6.24; 3.11.10; cf. 3.10.8-13).89 In view of this apparent elevation of the claim to rulership of a commonsense utilitarian rationality over the claims of intellectual and spiritual elites, one may be tempted to conclude that Locke is after all “the most shifty and esoteric of the treasonous clerks.”90 For perhaps indeed, by such Machiavellian reductions of thought to interest, Locke weakens or removes the moral constraints on willful thought and action for those relative few attentive to the radical implications of that reduction. But if so, then by the same means he also prepares the majority of society’s members to recognize assertions of willfulness as such, and consequently to resist them. But the ostracism of potentially authoritarian, elite claims of legislative wisdom cannot compose the whole of Locke’s strategy for promoting political rationality. Locke is perfectly aware that, although he can and must minimize it, he cannot altogether eliminate political societies’ dependence upon elite guidance. One may recall, for instance, that the creed of reasonable Chris¬ tianity, however “simple” and “plain” in itself, yet required learned defense against more involved, less reasonable interpretations of Scripture for its establish¬ ment, and unquestionably requires further explication and defense for its mainte¬ nance. Neither Christianity nor “Natural Religion” is so “Plain, and . . . intelligi¬ ble to all Mankind” (ECHU 3.9.23) as Locke sometimes suggests. The moral center of both is the law of nature, which is accessible, as Locke acknowledges after some preliminary obfuscations, to “a rational creature, and a studier of that law” (7TII.12, 124; alsoLAfols. 16, 34).

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Nor can Locke’s appeals to secular, rational self-interest suffice to relieve the dependence of popular rationality upon some form of elite guidance. Not only is interest as it is commonly perceived imperfectly aligned with justice, but more important, interest is itself an unreliable predictor of human action. We considered in chapter four Locke’s observation that the powerful desires for communal belonging and for doctrinal foundations all too frequently sweep people against their fundamental interests into the service of one or another partisan enthusiasm (ECHU 1.3.21-27). The true source of resistance to the potentially tyrannical designs of partisan enthusiasts, for Locke, is interest reinforced by pride in our rational liberty.91 The schoolmen and other sectarians provoke denunciations in the Essay similar in spirit to those directed against tyranny in the Two Treatises, not simply because their rhetorical obfuscations conceal an antisocial interest, but most fundamentally because their domineering designs constitute an affront to the pride of independent, self-disposing rational beings. This pride requires careful nurturing. Although a certain love of liberty or independence may arise spontane¬ ously or naturally in many of us, a respect for rational liberty certainly does not. It is therefore not sufficient merely to expose the partisanship or ambition that lurks behind the pedagogical pretensions of the likes of the schoolmen. What is further required is to replace the latter with a genuine counterelite, a class of educators capable of transmitting across generations and classes the respect for reason, the linkage of pride with rationality, that is necessary to the health of a Lockean, liberal commonwealth. In the end, despite Locke’s visible ostracism of the claim of wisdom to legisla¬ tive authority, even the Lockean society cannot escape the need for the indirect rule of philosophy or of something closely akin to it. Locke is compelled by the logic of his own argument to concern himself with the cultivation, if not of philos¬ ophy itself, at least of an intellectual leadership sufficiently philosophic in charac¬ ter to appreciate what dignifies human reason and thus makes it worthy of defend¬ ing against the recurring danger of its collapse into arbitrariness. Lockean liberalism therefore faces a very delicate task. If it too thoroughly ostracizes the claims of its rational elite, it leaves the cultivation of societal ratio¬ nality dependent upon the errant forces of popular interest and fashion. Yet if it honors such claims too publicly or emphatically, it tends to flatter and corrupt the very rationality that it intends to support. The task of the liberal regime as Locke designs it is somehow to respect the legitimate interests of both the reason that distinguishes us from one another and the reason that distinguishes rational from subrational beings.92 Stated more precisely, the task is somehow to respect the legitimate interests of the reason that distinguishes us from one another, while enlisting it in the support of the reason that distinguishes us from the “inferior Creatures.” Locke’s promotion of an egalitarian conception of rationality thus requires the formation of a rational elite in Locke’s own, ironically self-effacing image: an elite that modestly proclaims itself a mere “Under-Labourer” to its masters, that is willing to downplay or conceal its character as an elite, in particu¬ lar with respect to matters of direct political or legislative significance.

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It has been the purpose of this chapter to show that, taken as a whole and broadly conceived, the Lockean constitutional order is to be understood as an educational regime. Locke acts as the educator of educators not only in Some Thoughts Concerning Education but also in virtually all his other works, if less explicitly. One can see the self-effacing character of the Lockean elite exemplified not only in the parents whom Locke teaches to encourage children’s belief in their own liberty but also in Locke’s representative political officers and still further in his reasonable, tolerant clergy. None of these, however, functions in Locke’s design as the truly rational elite upon which society’s respect for rationality ultimately depends. While he insists that religion rightly conceived “ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational Creatures” and that its study is a universal concern and duty (ECHU 4.18.11, CU 8, 23), Locke makes no suggestion that the clergy in the constitutional order that he envisions is to supply the material out of which a truly rational elite can emerge. Nor even does he suggest that the clergy represents a spiritual orientation against which a self-conscious rationalism might measure itself and thereby sustain its vitality. It is surely true that in his most ambitious work and elsewhere Locke means to remove the “Rubbish, that lies in the way of Knowledge” in matters spiritual as well as secular. But the decisive point is that the “Master-Builders” of the “Commonwealth of Learning,” the true exemplars of a Lockean rational elite, are not theologians, but natural scientists (ECHU “Epistle to the Reader,” 9-10). As it is unsafe—for itself and for society—for reason or philosophy to allow itself to become the handmaid of theology, it is similarly unsafe, as Locke remarks suggestively, for philosophy to appear altogether exposed in public. But if the anticonventionalism inherent in Lockean (or any other genuine) philosophizing cannot and should not be fully concealed by clothing philosophy “in the ordinary Fashion and Language of the Country” (ECHU 2.21.20), it may yet be made socially respectable through an emphasis on its social usefulness. Locke suggests that it is relatively safe and even salutary for philosophy to appear in public partially exposed, as the new “natural philosophy” or its underlaborer. By honor¬ ing the work of the “Master-Builders” of natural philosophy or natural science as an exemplary employment of human reason, Locke advances his public purposes in the following ways. He establishes a prominent public model of devotion to reason and truth, of openness to the persuasive power of empirical evidence and rational argumentation. At the same time, he honors a form of reasoning that promises to generate very substantial utilitarian benefits while carrying in itself no significant legislative aspirations. Thus Locke directs the readers of the Essay in particular toward technological or power-oriented rather than contemplative pursuits (1.1.5; 2.23.12-13; 4.12.10-12).93 Directing their immediate attentions toward the “how” rather than the “why” of nature, the members of a Lockean intellectual elite, at least in their publicly influential capacity, prepare the augmen¬ tation of human power over nonhuman nature without supplying rationalizations for the partisan domination of some human beings by others.

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Locke seems to calculate that the pursuance of this strategy will promote the production of at least that degree of material prosperity required to support a general, societal consensus on the protection of property rights as a basic principle of justice, and it will lay the public foundation for the promotion of a societal respect for reason in the most generally accessible manner. It will tighten as it lends greater visibility to the bond between truth and utility, encouraging a con¬ ception of truth, if as a means, then as a means barely distinguishable from an end, indispensable for public and private happiness. Moreover, just as it grants “true Power and Honour” to the “wise and godlike” prince who protects and promotes the productive industry of his subjects (7TII.111, 42), so the Lockean society promises some substantial measure of such honor or admiring gratitude for the “generous Pains” (ECHU 4.3.16) of that class whose technological providence is equally necessary to the prosperity of the whole society. The common members of society, nonpractitioners of the new science, will learn to respect and support it, as Bacon suggested, through their experience of its “effects and works.”94 At the same time, the policy of publicly supporting and honoring scientific explora¬ tions of the infinite mysteries of material nature can provide socially beneficial direction for the indulgence of the more expansive yearnings of the intellectually ambitious class. In minimizing his ostracism of that class, Locke minimizes the potential for cultivating enemies from within, and further reinforces his claim to have identified as the basis of rational consensus a principle of justice that would be both least dangerous and fairest to all concerned. Yet, as always for Locke, there are no perfect solutions. Whatever gratifica¬ tions inhere in the providential generosity and the measure of intellectual adven¬ turism that the Lockean ethic affords its elite practitioners, the underlying element of asceticism remains potentially problematic. The self-discipline that that ethic requires, exemplified at the highest level by Locke’s own pedagogical reserve, is exemplified at a high level also by the scientific elite that Locke envisions. As we have seen, Locke acts as a judicious educator by confining his appeal, for the most part, to persuading and exhorting his readers to the practice of reasoning in the careful, constant pursuit of true and solid happiness. In this way he imitates the salutary austerity of nature, impressing upon his readers both the necessity and the dignity of a rational life, respecting their rational independence and raising their rational industry by providing only the scattered materials or seeds of arguments pointing toward the nature of human happiness. This forbearance of the corrupting pleasures associated with legislating for or ruling others seems even more clearly exemplified in the Lockean scientific elite’s disciplined restraint of the desire to comprehend—or to subject to experimental manipulation—the whole of nature, human and nonhuman alike. The question persists, however, concerning whether Locke’s casting of philosophy in the instrumentalist public role of underlaborer or handmaiden to a nonteleological natural science is more apt in the long run to restrain or to embolden the desire to command. In the most important respect, the problem posed by the Lockean rational elite is identical to that posed by the Baconian rational elite, as depicted especially in

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the New Atlantis. In the island commonwealth of Bensalem, although the scientific elite (the “Fathers of Salomon’s House”) appears autonomous in relation to the state, that elite in fact requires direction from a more comprehensive wisdom, from a moral-political science that remains “secret and retired.”95 In Bacon’s fable, that wisdom is the possession of the “merchant” Joabin. It seems to emerge only partly as a continuation or secularization of Joabin’s “Jewish dreams,” and mainly from his experience as a “Merchant of Light” or from his natural-scientific inquiries. Yet the specific manner in which it is to grow from the soil of the new natural science represents no small part of the secrecy or mystery of Baconian political science. Perhaps it belongs to Bacon’s Platonism to affirm that the ap¬ pearance of such singular, comprehensive wisdom occurs ultimately by accident. Nonetheless, one can acknowledge that the likes of Joabin can hardly be bred like livestock,96 and yet harbor a concern as to whether the culture of modem science and technology provides for them adequate nourishment, or even actively impairs their development. Absent an explanation of how a more humane wisdom may develop out of the relatively narrow, instrumental form of rationality characteristic of modem science, the danger is that the modem project of scientific rationality may prove self-undermining. Succumbing to what Strauss has termed “the charm of competence,”97 intoxicated by their own unprecedented technological prowess, the members of a Baconian rational elite may neglect to consider whether their euphoria is purchased at the cost of their capacity to conceive of reasoning as anything more than an assertion of power. By his insistent secrecy with respect to political science, Bacon may seem to provide an opportunity for the usurpation, by visionaries of still more radical and effectively far less humane revolutions than he intends, of the vast powers that he would entrust to the prudent and humane likes of Joabin. Notwithstanding his comparative openness in presenting his political science in the form of a commonly accessible doctrine, Locke’s reticence in explaining the nature and genesis of the true rational happiness that is to govern and to justify the scientific-technological project may seem to indicate that with respect to the ultimate issues, Locke’s political science too harbors a dangerous Baconian secrecy. In my judgment, however, the apparent openness of Locke’s political science signifies not a clever continuation or perfection, but rather a genuine, substantial correction of the Baconian policy of secrecy. We saw in the preceding chapter that although Locke is reticent, he is not simply silent or relativistic on the nature of the happiness that is capable of redeeming our labors, even those of the most austerely clear-sighted reasoners. And on the basis of what was shown in chapter three, we can see similarly that Locke quietly scatters the seeds of an understanding of how the requisite conception of rational happiness may grow out of the culture of modem, Baconian science properly interpreted. Although he counts himself among Bacon’s admiring students and followers, Locke nonetheless implicitly questions the adequacy of Bacon’s (and for that matter Descartes’s) interpretation or presentation of the moral-political signifi¬ cance of modem science. From the Lockean perspective. Bacon’s extravagant

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descriptions of the modern project may take effect as a form of flattery opposed to but no less dangerous than those associated with premodem philosophy and theology. The image of a scientific priesthood in the New Atlantis, as well as the rhetoric in the New Organon announcing a great revolution of the mind issuing in the human conquest of nature, would seem likely to engender anew the arrogant, enthusiastic complacency among the few and the sheeplike submissiveness among the many that are incompatible with the Lockean cause of rational self-govern¬ ment. Perhaps the Baconian rhetoric of revolution and human sovereignty is functional or necessary at the outset of the modem movement, lending spirit to Bacon’s call to arms against the old regime. But in time—in Locke’s time—as the victory of that movement appears more likely, it becomes necessary for it to redirect its energy, away from overturning the old order and toward establishing and governing a new order. Whereas a bold assertion of human sovereignty may be necessary to overturn an old regime based upon a stifling dogma of divine sovereignty, the establishment of stable governance in the new order rests upon a more modest understanding of the middling character of the human condition. Whereas Locke and Bacon alike regard the modem scientific-technological enter¬ prise as instrumental to the perennial need to care for the conditions of human reason,98 for Locke, in contrast to Bacon, circumstances dictate a greater forth¬ rightness with respect to the deeper modesty that underlies the manifest boldness of that project. For Locke, the pedagogical utility of modem science depends upon its power to inspire the movement of thought described in chapters three through five. Modern science can become a vitally contributing member of a constitutional liberal republic not simply through its association with the Baconian or Machiavel¬ lian themes of innovation and human creativity but also through its more moderate teaching of both the potential capaciousness and the ultimate limits of human power, knowledge, and wisdom.99 Thus Locke never tires of iterating the theme with which he introduces the Essay, that “the Comprehension of our Understand¬ ings, comes exceeding short of the vast Extent of Things” (1.1.5). Such profes¬ sions of humility are neither fundamentally disingenuous nor inconsistent with a proper pride in reason. Locke fully agrees with Bacon that the progressive experi¬ mental discovery of the powers inherent in natural substances promises an immea¬ surable enhancement of the human power to harness the forces of nature. Yet it is equally important that as the precise natural essences of things are ultimately unknowable, the powers of natural substances in principle infinite, and the uses to which they may be put imperfectly conceivable in advance—as the case of “that one contemptible Mineral” iron illustrates (4.12.11; cf. 4.6.11)—Locke’s ostensi¬ bly utilitarian rationale for the study of nature necessarily reinforces our aware¬ ness of the incompleteness of our knowledge. The continuation and enhancement of our enjoyment of the benefits of what knowledge we can acquire depends upon our abiding awareness of the ultimate mysteriousness of the natural world. More important still, in Locke’s argument our self-conscious acknowledgment of the element of human creativity or conventionalism in our conceptions of the

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natural world is to stimulate a reflection upon the nature and natural condition of that creative self. Our manipulation of experimental conditions to bring forth the hidden powers of natural beings must stimulate a reflection upon the needs or desires in the service of which we would harness those powers, and therefore, still more radically, upon the extent of our powers to manipulate or reconstitute those animating desires. At this point, having brought us to imagine a condition of radical human sovereignty, wherein we would hold the quasi-divine power to recreate our natural condition and therewith our very selves, Locke shows us the ultimately futile, dangerously quixotic character of such imaginings. Proper reflection upon the nature and natural condition of the human self engenders an ultimately humble acknowledgment of the unalterable human condition of “medi¬ ocrity” that frames our activist strivings. However powerful we become, we cannot escape the limitations to which we are subject as beings corporeal as well as rational. We cannot make perfectly whole a human self that is naturally divided between individuality and sociality, or more deeply still, between life and death in its consciousness of its own mortality. We cannot finally overcome the needi¬ ness of the mind or the incompleteness of our understanding of the law and happi¬ ness proper to us. We must therefore learn to rest contented with faculties at best sufficient for the achievement of a merely human kind of happiness analogous to the merely human kind of wisdom that Socrates claims in Plato’s Apology. It is fitting to close with this discussion of the pedagogical significance of natural science. For in the end, technological natural science is the most important and the most potentially problematic of the various institutions, governmental or nongovernmental, that compose the Lockean constitutional order. Although in its endeavor to be both egalitarian and rationalist, the Lockean commonwealth requires a relationship of mutual cooperation or reinforcement between popular and elite forms of rationality, the proper formation of its intellectual, pedagogical elite is nonetheless of special, primary importance. The promulgation of a proper understanding of the major formative influence upon that elite is therefore also a matter of special importance. To a great extent, the long-term stability of the Lockean commonwealth rests upon the promulgation at least among intellectual elites of a proper understanding of the broader significance of modem natural science. Even as we enjoy its practical benefits and swell with pride in the clever¬ ness and inventiveness that it reveals in us; and conversely, even as we acknowl¬ edge the incompleteness of the knowledge of nature that we can gain through it, Locke admonishes us to resist dogmatic generalizations derived from either the practice or the theory of modem science. Whether it grows out of technological pride or philosophical skepticism, we must resist the lazy, only apparently liberating inference of a radical, thorough¬ going conventionalism, whereby the claims of reason are cynically and promis¬ cuously identified with assertions of power. Once again, we must receive the solid benefits of the new science, not quite as Montaigne had suggested, as a diversion of our minds from their higher, disordering yearnings, but as a kind of ballast to stabilize us in our reflections on the unprovidedness and providedness of our

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natural condition. We must understand the element of skepticism or incomplete¬ ness in the new science not as the effacement of any moral rule or moral rational¬ ity but rather as a powerful source of reasonable moral orientation in itself—as an indicator of the human condition of “mediocrity” or partial sovereignty. So far as we are able to maintain this understanding, modem science can maintain its status as a fully contributing member of the Lockean commonwealth. It can reinforce Locke’s teaching of rational self-government most importantly through its gover¬ nance of the desire that is most dangerous of all and that modem science itself, along with other modem principles and institutions, most tends to excite: the desire to be autonomous, to be perfectly free and absolutely sovereign.

Notes 1. Consider also the Gettysburg Address, in which Lincoln refers to “the proposition that all men are created equal” (emphasis supplied). I am suggesting that the aspirational dimension of the egalitarian natural rights theory is already present in Locke’s thought. For a contrary view, see Harry V. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1959), 317-29. For the evidence that in the Declaration itself, the claim of selfevident truths is more pedagogical than dogmatic, see Michael Zuckert, “Self-Evident Truth and the Declaration of Independence,” Review of Politics 49, no. 3 (1987): 319-39. 2. On Locke’s experimentalism in the Essay, see especially Colie, “The Essayist in his Essay,” 236-37, 247-48, 251-52, 260-61. 3. See Thomas Pangle, “Executive Energy and Popular Spirit in Lockean Constitu¬ tionalism,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 17, no. 2 (Spring 1987): 253-66, at 260. 4. Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 190-92. 5. With the following discussion contrast Rahe, who sees in Locke’s account of pacific Christianity a strategy of praising “the established religion for the very virtues it lacked” (Republics, 302). 6. See also Locke’s fragment “Pacifick Christians,” in King, Life of John Locke, 27677. 7. Zuckert, “Locke and the Problem of Civil Religion,” 188; Sherlock and Barrus, “The Problem of Religion in Liberalism,” 296-97. 8. On the Lockean virtue of charity, see Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 143-44, and the closely related discussion of liberality by Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty, 141-45. 9. On the inegalitarian implications of positive divine revelation, see Mansfield, “Thomas Jefferson,” in American Political Thought, eds. Morton Frisch and Richard Stevens (Itasca, Ill.: F. E. Peacock, 1983), 28-29. 10. On the Social Contract, 4.8. 11. It is noteworthy here, however, that whereas Locke suggests that those who confront the obstacles imposed by custom and the sheer necessity of laboring remain obliged to inquire into “Matters of Religion,” he does not make this claim with respect to those whose ignorance or non-Christian belief results from official compulsion (ECHU 4.20.3-4). 12. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, “Introduction,” 11-12, 16, and 2.1.3: “The profoundest and most wide-seeing minds of Greece and Rome never managed to grasp the very general but very simple conception of the likeness of all men and of the equal right of all at birth to liberty. . . . Jesus Christ had to come down to earth to make all members

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of the human race understand that they were naturally similar and equal” (439). 13. See Rahe, Republics 304-05; Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy, 53, 233; Wolfson, “Toleration and Relativism,” 224-25. 14. Cf. Eldon Eisenach, “Religion and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government" in Harpham, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, 72ff. 15. Sherlock and Barrus, “The Problem of Religion in Liberalism,” 297-98. This reasoning seems to leave open the possibility that even those sects embracing the true, tolerant Christianity could seek to gain control over government for defensive purposes, to prevent impositions by others guilty of misinterpreting Christianity or corrupted by ambition. Thus the cause of liberal constitutionalism may rest more securely upon “the multiplicity of sects” (Federalist #51) than upon the spirit of tolerance inherent in Locke’s reasonable Christianity. Yet, even if Locke thus betrays some doubt concerning the power of his interpretation to effectuate the desired spirit of tolerance among all or most professed Christians, his conception of the church as a voluntary society and his insistence upon the simplicity and generality of Christian doctrine, both viewed in the light of his assessment of the power of the mind’s natural propensity toward partisanship, appear well suited to promote the very multiplication of sects that would “supply the defect” of the better motive of Christian tolerance. One way or the other, Locke’s Christianity supports the cause of tolerance and peace as well as that of political liberty. I thank Professor Doug Kries for sharpening my thinking on this point. 16. Set Leviathan, chap. 31 (MacPherson, 397-98). 17. For a broader, more historically informed account of the terms and stakes of this debate, see Spellman, John Locke and the Problem of Depravity, 8-38. 18. See Discourse on Method, 6, in Descartes: Discourse on Method and the Medita¬ tions, ed. F. E. Sutcliffe (Middlesex: Penguin, 1968), 79. 19. See also “Homo Ante et Post Lapsum,” MS Locke c. 28, f. 113; Michael Zuckert, “An Introduction to Locke’s First Treatise,” Interpretation 8, no. 1 (1979): 69-74, and “Locke and the Problem of Civil Religion,” 201-02; and Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republi¬ canism, 144-47. Contrast Spellman, John Locke and the Problem of Depravity, 101-02, 140-53. 20. Zuckert finds reason for questioning Locke’s reading of the Bible on the fundamental issues of the character of the divine commandment and of the divine donation in relation to natural human rights. See “An Introduction,” passim, and Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, 260-62. Cf. Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 141-58; David Foster, “The Bible and Natural Freedom in John Locke’s Political Thought,” in Piety and Humanity, ed. Douglas Kries (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 181-210. I do not contest these readings. For the purposes of the present discussion, I am interested primarily in the intended pedagogical effects, not the interpretive fidelity, of Locke’s reasonable Christianity. 21. This is the partially explicit suggestion of Strauss; see especially “What Is Political Philosophy?” in What Is Political Philosophy?, 49-55. Pangle comes similarly close to this conclusion, Spirit of Modem Republicanism, 141-71. Wallin makes a more direct assertion of Locke’s atheistic radicalism in “John Locke and the American Founding.” 22. It is certainly justifiable to argue, however, that Locke’s development of the princi¬ ple of human self-ownership effects significant modifications in the moral and jural princi¬ ples that he initially derives from the principle of divine ownership. See Zuckert, Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, 216-46.

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23. Contrast the interpretation of Rahe, Republics, 307-08, 361, 500ff. Foster, “The Bible and Natural Freedom,” argues that here too Locke’s understanding of God’s provi¬ sion diverges from that of the Bible (197-98). 24. At RC 188 and 223, Locke notices without comment Jesus’ references, as reported in the Gospel of Matthew, to the pain of “hell-fire” or of the “furnace of fire” as the ultimate punishment of iniquity. 25. See STCE 40-52, 76-87, 126, 191, along with 7TII.8, 10-12. My understanding of Locke’s view of punishment follows that of Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty, 97-98, 114-19. 26. See also “Thus I Thinke,” in King, Life of John Locke, 307. Much useful historical background information appears in Spellman’s discussion of the Pelagian heresy in relation to Locke’s moral theology (Locke and the Problem of Depravity, 2-3, 15-38). 27. Mansfield, “The Political Character of Property in Locke,” and Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 141-71. 28. Montaigne, “Of diversion,” Essays, III.4. 29. The Spirit of the Laws, 25.12. 30. Raymond Polin, “John Locke’s Conception of Freedom,” in Yolton, John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, compares Locke’s conception of property to that of Hegel, observing that for Locke “Every man, being equal to every other, manifests his liberty by the domination, the ownership of his property” (6). Similarly, for Rapaczynski, Lockean “appropriation is the fundamental activity which permits man to overcome his estrangement from the natural environment and to achieve his autonomy” {Nature and Politics, 180). This latter formulation in particular may be somewhat more Hegelian than Locke’s discus¬ sion warrants, as Locke declines to hold forth the prospect of ultimate human wholeness, or of the final overcoming of the unprovidedness of our natural condition. Nonetheless, Rapaczynski is clearly on the right track so far as his reading points to the property right in Locke as vital to the achievement of the mental stability and independent spirit required for genuine self-possession and self-government. Contrast Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992), 144-61, and Manent, Intellectual History of Liberalism, 40-42. 31. Pangle, “Executive Energy and Popular Spirit,” 262-64; Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 197-98. 32. One might question, however, the power of the more distinctively modern forms of wealth to perform this desirable political function of solidifying individuals’ sense of their own freedom. Locke’s observation of the “Phantastical imaginary value” of money, as compared in particular to the real, substantial worth of land (II. 184) points to the potential problem. Whereas the aristocratic maintenance of the landed estate as the primary form of wealth and therewith the general submission to the principle of heredity may well have had an enervating effect upon individuals’ productive industry, it must also have provided a certain sense of grounding or psychological stability, at least for the proprietors of such estates. But in a regime in which paper currency or “imaginary” assets come to supplant real estate as the primary form of wealth, the danger arises that individuals uneasy with a reliance upon only their imaginations will feel increasingly, recurrently compelled to provide substantiating reminders of their freedom or power through their activities as consumers. Thus the mind’s needy, errant propensity to absorb itself promiscuously into larger societal or theological causes to remedy its uneasiness amid its natural condition of unprovidedness would be corrected—if it is proper to call it a “correction”—only through the redirecting of its attention toward a procession of ultimately trivial material diversions. To avert the collapse of the culture of rational liberty into a petty or sordid consumerism,

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perhaps Locke would rely simply upon the discipline of the mind to substantiate the requisite sense of freedom mainly through a mere contemplation of our paper, imaginary assets. Or, more likely, perhaps the true Lockean solution appears in Jefferson’s vision of a nation dominated by small freeholders, or in more contemporary terms, by middle-class homeowners. On the entire issue, see especially Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1.1.3; 2.2.10, 13; 2.3.17. 33. Again cf. Locke’s understanding of the psychological basis of the desire to acquire with that of Machiavelli, The Prince, “Letter of Dedication,” chap. 3. 34. For this argument I am again indebted to the discussion in Tarcov, Locke’s Educa¬ tion for Liberty, 141-45. Contrast Axtell, “Introduction” to The Educational Writings of John Locke, 207; Seliger, The Liberal Politics of John Locke, 157-58; Tully, A Discourse on Property, 148; Dunn, Locke, 40. 35. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 239n.; Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republi¬ canism, 144. Contrast Dunn, “Justice and the Interpretation of Locke’s Political Theory,” Political Studies 16 (1968): 68-87. 36. See STCE 207; Works 5.54, 64, 72, 163; CJL #1693, 1/19/94; King, Life of John Locke, 97-98. Wood, Politics of Locke’s Philosophy, observes aptly that in “Locke’s vocabulary, labor, industry, perseverance, sobriety, and usefulness replaced aristocratic honor, pride, dignity, spirit, and the non-utilitarian” (148; also 128). 37. Locke directs such an appeal also to those adults who are animated by the highest ambition or the most profound desire for dominion, suggesting that that “Prince” who secures “protection and encouragement to the honest industry of Mankind against the oppression of power and the narrownesse of Party,” not only “will quickly be too hard for his neighbours,” but in preserving a truly legitimate government—especially by prerogative power, at times when legitimacy is most vulnerable and arbitrary absolutism therefore most inviting—would earn the highest distinction and esteem, becoming the “wise and godlike” bearer of “true Power and Honour” (H.42, 111, 166). 38. In this I depart to some extent from the opinion of Tarcov, who is “tempted to say” that the separation of political power and the parental power of moral education constitutes “the fundamental separation of powers” in Locke (Locke’s Education for Liberty, 72). I suggest that for rhetorical purposes Locke tends to exaggerate the strictness of this separa¬ tion of powers, as he does with respect to the (still more fundamental) separation of political from ecclesiastical powers. 39. See Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, First Part. With this reading of the problematic naturalness of the Lockean family, contrast again Ashcraft, Locke’s Two Treatises, 109-11. 40. Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty, 67, and Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republi¬ canism, 232-33. With the latter in particular, contrast Simmons, Lockean Theory of Rights, 206ff., whose analytical, deontological approach precludes any consideration of a design on Locke’s part to employ arguments that are dubious in themselves to point to the prob¬ lematic natural basis of the rights and obligations that he proposes. 41. Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 230-31. 42. Indeed, in view of this observation of men’s native shortsightedness one is led to think again of Rousseau, in particular of Rousseau’s conjecture that the native human male not only lacks a desire to care for his offspring (as does the female, in his account) but often lacks even any knowledge of their existence (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Masters, 120-21, and note /, 218-19). Given the emphasis that Locke places on the relative length of the period of dependency in children, it seems to me doubtful that he overlooks this potential significance of the relative length of human mothers’ period of gestation, and

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more likely that he chooses to allow inquisitive readers to infer for themselves the full magnitude of his estimation of the naturally problematic status of the family. 43. David Blankenhorn, Fatherless America (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 182. 44. At ECHU 1.2.27 Locke does observe that the “young Savage” acts “according to the Fashion of his Tribe,” but nonetheless places the mental formation of savages at little remove from the native consciousness. Cf. TT 11.49: “in the beginning all the World was America, and more so than that is now.” 45. Behind such arguments, as Foster explains, is a conceptions of fathers, as the bearers of a quasi-divine creative power, as representatives and partners of God. See David Foster, “Taming the Fathers: John Locke’s Critique of Patriarchal Fatherhood,” Review of Politics 56, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 655-56. 46. Although he displays little immediate political interest in the cause of women’s rights, in his writings on education in particular Locke clearly lays the groundwork for a quite far-reaching conception of sexual equality. By denying that there is any difference in rationality between men and women as classes, Locke clearly implies that women hold the right to pursue happiness by the light of their reason, and therefore to consent to the rules whereby they are governed in both political and private associations. Declaring that the “principal Aim” of Some Thoughts Concerning Education is to guide the upbringing of young gentlemen, Locke yet allows that much of his counsel may be applied equally well to the education of daughters; for “where the Difference of Sex requires different Treat¬ ment, ’twill be no hard Matter to distinguish” (6). In private correspondence to Mrs. Edward Clarke he is notably more direct, explaining that he recommends precisely the same intellectual and moral education for girls as for boys, because “I acknowledge no difference of sex in your mind relating ... to truth, virtue, and obedience.” (Quoted in Axtell, Educational Writings, 344.) See the additional evidence for this point in Melissa Butler, “Early Liberal Roots of Feminism: John Locke and the Attack on Patriarchy,” American Political Science Review 72 (1978): 148-50. 47. Cf. Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 17. On the problem of justice and gratitude, see also Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) 1.2, pp. 11-12; Prince chaps. 3, 6, 9. Tarcov instruct¬ ively and frequently calls attention to the Machiavellianism of Locke’s educational coun¬ sels, in Locke’s Education for Liberty. On the significance of Locke’s treatment of the obligation of honoring parents, see Strauss, Natural Right and History, 218-19, 247nl25; Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 232-39; Foster, “Taming the Fathers.” 48. See, e.g., Lorenne Clark, The Sexism of Social and Political Theory (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 16-40; Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988). 49. Butler, “Early Liberal Roots of Feminism,” 147 (emphasis supplied). See also Mary Walsh, “Locke and Feminism on Public and Private Realms of Activities,” Review of Politics 57, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 251-77. 50. Nor does it support the contemporary view of men and women as socially inter¬ changeable, which, by implying that childrearing is the task of genderless “parents,” not necessarily mothers and fathers as such, contributes heavily to a climate of opinion within which an epidemic of fatherlessness in particular, with its many dangerous symptoms, can spread rapidly over liberal-democratic societies. See Blankenhorn, Fatherless America. 51. Odd as it may appear, this too is a theme that Locke shares with Bacon, whose aggressively masculine rhetoric in exhorting his readers to the conquest of nature must be reconciled with the interesting fact that in the New Atlantis’ “Feast of the Family,” (seem¬ ing) patriarchs receive public honors not for statesmanship or martial prowess, but rather

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for fecundity. See also Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws 4.8. 52. Among present-day Locke scholars Pangle in particular seems to me to represent this view. See Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 230-43, 272-75. 53. See, e.g., Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 114-16. Cf. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2.2.2. With respect to their cumulative effects on family life, one might compare our entire complex of laws, regulations, and predominant cultural precepts bearing on marriage and parenthood with the egalitarian inheritance laws that Tocqueville describes, at once anti-aristocratic and antipatriarchal. By the force of this legal-cultural regime, “with the continual rise and fall of its hammer strokes, everything is reduced to a fine, impalpable dust” (1.1.3)—first the hereditary estates and the extended families that depended upon those estates, and more recently even the nuclear families that Tocqueville hoped would survive this modern, liberal-democratic battering as the natural, irreducible remnants of the traditional family. 54. Contrast Rahe, Republics, 510, 1024nl02. See also Wolfson’s discussion of the concerns raised by Proast about the likely moral effects of Locke’s toleration principles (“Toleration and Relativism,” 214, 225-31). That Locke, in his 1667 “Essay Concerning Toleration,” holds divorce and even polygamy “indifferent” with respect to the end of salvation does not mean that he regards such practices as morally or politically indifferent. Locke not only insists upon tolerating various religions but also labors tirelessly to promote their reasonable, politically salutary interpretation. I suggest that his approach is similar with respect to the constitution of the family. 55. The significance of this conception of marriage and parenthood as policy appears still more profound when viewed in the light of Locke’s more general enthusiasm for the technological expansion of the realm of human power and choice. From his humanitarian denial that woman is obliged “to bring forth her Children in Sorrow and Pain, if there could be found a Remedy for it” (1.47), the question arises, for instance, whether Locke would share the enthusiasm of, say, J. S. Mill at the prospect of technological improve¬ ments in contraception, to say nothing of other innovations in reproductive and counterreproductive technology. As the extension of parents’ responsibility even to the conception of their children would mean a momentous expansion of freedom for both sexes and espe¬ cially for women, it may seem to be a straightforward extension of the Lockean principle. There are also, however, Lockean grounds for mistrusting and even regulating such inventions. So far as they teach parents to regard their children no longer as gifts but now as products of human choice, they would seem likely to diminish parents’ sense of obliga¬ tion toward the unintended and perhaps even intended children that they conceive and bear. Moreover, so far as they remove a powerful sanction against sexual promiscuity, they may produce the decidedly anti-Lockean effect of facilitating a relapse into the impulsive sensualism characteristic of the native self, thus undermining the moral and emotional discipline required for the sustenance of marriages and civil societies alike. 56. Montaigne, Essays, 1.28, "Of friendship" (Frame, 139-42). 57. The phrase belongs to Diana Schaub, Erotic Liberalism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), x, who, despite her misgivings about Hobbes and Locke, does not associate herself with any romantic antiliberalisms or romantic appropriations of liberalism. See also Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 4647, 301. For an account of later liberals’ attempt to appropriate the romantic reaction, see Nancy Rosenblum, Another Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987).

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58. The measure of emotional austerity that characterizes the Lockean marriage may appear to set Locke apart from Tocqueville, who remarks disapprovingly upon the “singu¬ lar opinion” of his aristocratic ancestors of the intolerable danger of relying solely or mainly upon the heart in the formation of marriages. “They thought that chance saw clearer than choice.” In his ultimate judgment, however, Tocqueville is actually in close agreement with Locke in the conception of marriage as grounded properly in a mixture of choice and necessity, or of the heart and the understanding. Acknowledging that the education of American girls “tends to develop judgment at the cost of imagination and to make women chaste and cold rather than tender and loving companions of men,” Tocqueville yet affirms that the resulting diminution of the charms of private life “is a secondary evil, which should be faced for the sake of the greater good” (Democracy in America, 2.3.11, 9). 59. Cf. Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium (189d-194e), presenting as a divine punishment the division of original wholes into two human beings longing for their lost other halves. 60. Much of the inspiration for the remarks in this paragraph comes from Diana Schaub’s thoughtful essay, “Marriage envy,” The Public Interest (Winter 1996): 93-102. See also Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The Divorce Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), especially 45-65, 129-52. 61. “Some Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman,” in Axtell, The Educational Writings of John Locke, 400. The suggestion of the exclusive concern of the Second Treatise is implicit in its subtitle, “An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government.” 62. Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy, 62-68. 63. Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 186, 202. 64. Taming the Prince, 208. 65. Leviathan, chap. 21, MacPherson, 263. 66. Contrast Seliger, who holds that “Locke’s political society presupposes the coexis¬ tence of contractual with such natural ties as the modem conception of a nation associates with it” (“Locke, Liberalism, and Nationalism,” in Yolton, John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, 22). 67. As the rationality of rational patriotism represents an allegiance to a constitutional order that upholds the true principles of political legitimacy, for Locke, its sentimental element represents an instance of the association of ideas, in large part an association or outgrowth of the private affections that a decent political society protects. In the entry in his “Common-Place Book” entitled “Amor Patriae,” Locke observes that the “remem¬ brance of pleasures and conveniences we have had there; the love of our friends, whose conversation and assistance may be pleasant and useful to us; and the thoughts of recom¬ mending ourselves to our old acquaintance, by the improvements we shall bring home, either of our fortunes or abilities, or the increase of esteem we expect for having travelled and seen more than others of this world ... all these preserve in us, in long absence, a constant affection to our country, and a desire to return to it” [in King, Life of John Locke, 291; cf. Nathan Tarcov, “A Non-Lockean Locke and the Character of Liberalism,” in Liberalism Reconsidered, eds. Douglas MacLean and Claudia Mills (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allenheld, 1983), 136]. Note that in the same entry Locke indicates the prob¬ lematic character of much patriotism, observing that “the chief cause, that keeps us a longing after our country” when we are abroad and that attaches us to it when we are home is simply the desire to have a fixed home, or the human aversion to transience. Recall the discussion in chapter four of the significance of this aversion. 68. Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 184-88.

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69. Democracy in America, 1.1.3 end. 70. E.g., MacPherson, Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 251-58; Seliger, Liberal Politics of John Locke, 285-86. 71. See Martin Hughes, “Locke on Taxation and Suffrage,” History of Political Thought 11, no. 3 (1990): 423-42. See also Ashcraft, Locke’s Two Treatises, 177-78. 72. Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 200; also Ruth Grant, “Locke’s Political Anthro¬ pology and Lockean Individualism,” Journal of Politics 50 (1988): 54-57. 73. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Peoria,” 1854, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy Basler (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), vol. 2, 266. 74. The Spirit of the Laws, “Preface.” That this remark signifies actually a quite limited affirmation of the reasonableness of diverse societies’ laws is indicated by Montesquieu’s subsequent suggestion that “most peoples” are subjected to despotic forms of government (5.14 end). 75. The Spirit of the Laws, 11.5 et seq. 76. Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 199. In referring to the “natural political power” of individuals, Ashcraft again fails to see the distinctive character of political power in Locke’s design, because he fails to appreciate fully the problematic character of power in the state of nature (Locke’s Two Treatises, 166). Cf. Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy, 15-23. 77. Cf. the ironic reference to Moses as “a mere executor of things that had been ordered for him by God,” in The Prince, chap. 6. 78. Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 200-04. 79. Rahe, Republics, 474. Because he does not appreciate the depth of the problem of the state of nature, Ashcraft fails also to accord proper weight to the Lockean executive, treating Locke’s discussion of executive prerogative as merely prefatory to the doctrine of popular resistance (Locke’s Two Treatises, 186-91). 80. Cf. n.135: Governments “can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the Subjects” (emphasis supplied). 81. The relatively cautious character of Locke’s incorporation of popular judgment into his constitutional design may be inferred as well from a comparison of his treatment of the judicial power with that of Montesquieu. Fully sympathetic to Locke’s mistrust of priestly elites, Montesquieu pushes the liberal-Protestant principle further than does Locke, in his insistence upon an independent judicial power held by popular juries as indispensable to constitutional government (Spirit of the Laws, 11.6). While there is certainly no doctrine of judicial prerogative in Locke—whose near silence on the subject seems to indicate an intention that the bearers of judicial power indeed be “mere executors” or interpreters, or compose truly the least dangerous branch of government—Locke does seem content to allow the judicial power to rest mainly in the hands of a body of specialized, professional judges. Maintaining emphatically that the people must retain their common right to judge the legitimacy of government by their interpretation of the law of nature, Locke stops short of providing them with the power to render regular legal or constitutional judgments. 82. Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address,” in Life and Selected Writings, eds. Koch and Peden, 322. Cf. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1.2.7: “I have always considered what is called a mixed government to be a chimera. There is in truth no such thing as a mixed government (in the sense usually given to the words), since in any society one finds in the end some principle of action that dominates all the others.”

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83. The most notable of such critics in the twentieth century is of course C. B. MacPherson. See The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 194-262. See also Wood, The Politics of Locke’s Philosophy and John Locke and Agrarian Capitalism. 84. Cf. Hobbes’s attempt to formulate the rules or laws of nature in a manner “intelli¬ gible, even to the meanest capacity” (Leviathan, chap. 15, in MacPherson, 214). Arthur Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man, 144-46, finds a similar intention underlying Rous¬ seau’s egalitarian principles of political right. 85. The Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 272. 86. Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty, 116-17, 140-41, 194-98; Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 216-29, 264-66, 272; Mehta, Anxiety of Freedom, 133-53. 87. Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 213-14. 88. Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 274, 214; cf. 148. 89. See Michael Zuckert, “Fools and Knaves,” 555-64. 90. This witty description belongs to Dunn, who employs it to characterize the opinion of critics of Locke such as Strauss, Political Thought of John Locke, 5. 91. On the interplay between pride and interest in American constitutionalism, see Mansfield, America’s Constitutional Soul, especially chaps. 6 and 7. 92. Mansfield, “The Political Character of Property in Locke,” 33-34. 93. See also “Knowledge, Its Extent and Measure,” and “Of Study,” in King, Life of John Locke, 87-91, 106-07, and “De Arte Medica,” in Fox Bourne, Life of John Locke, 1.222-27. 94. New Organon, 1.128. 95. This reading of the New Atlantis is heavily influenced by the work of Jerry Wein¬ berger, Science, Faith, and Politics: Francis Bacon and the Utopian Roots of the Modern Age (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985) and “Introduction” to New Atlantis and the Great Instauration (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1989), vii-xxxiii, and also by that of Laurence Lampert, especially in Nietzsche and Modern Times, 27-66. For Bacon’s description of political science as a science “secret and retired,” see Advancement of Learning (Works III.473). 96. Cf. Plato, Republic 458e-460e, 546a-547a. 97. What Is Political Philosophy?, 40. 98. Consider Bacon’s revealing remark, “I care little about the mechanical arts, only about those things which they contribute to the equipment of philosophy,” Works IV.271, quoted in Lampert, Nietzsche and Modern Times, 65. 99. What I judge to be Locke’s prudent, constructive humility appears timid and repres¬ sive to Mehta, because Mehta locates the content of freedom not in rational self-govern¬ ment but in the play of the liberated imagination (Anxiety of Freedom, 99-101, 118).

Chapter Seven

Conclusion Contrary to the claims of its conservative and communitarian critics and of its pragmatic and antifoundationalist proponents, political liberalism appeals to political philosophy for its sustenance more directly and explicitly than does any other constitutional form or political doctrine. The liberal order is grounded in rational self-government and rational consent. To be properly self-governing, liberals must be able to affirm by a genuinely rational choice their constitutional order and way of life. They must be able to give reasons for resisting the nonrational appeals of communal solidarity or of appetitive self-indulgence or imaginative self-expression, and for practicing the virtues upon which the health of a liberal society depends. The liberal society therefore requires the presence of political philosophy in the strong sense. Liberalism requires political philosophy to perform not only the “Under-Labourer’s” function of critical reason, exposing our theoret¬ ical vices and deflating our partisan enthusiasms, but also the affirmative function of making visible the grounding of our choices in a philosophically defensible understanding of the human condition and the principles of justice or natural right. In particular, liberalism must clarify the grounds for the conviction of the good¬ ness of the life of rational liberty upon which its doctrines of individual rights and of constitutionally limited, consensual government depend. Yet, in their justified concern about the dangers inherent in the antifounda¬ tionalist sympathies of many of today’s professed liberals and nonliberals alike, rationalist liberals must take care to prevent their sensitivity to the need for solid foundations from rendering them insensitive to the dangers inherent in their own ambitious enterprise. The dream of John Smart Mill, of a society in which the likes of Socrates receive public support and even public applause, is at once a 245

246

Chapter Seven

utopian and a characteristically liberal dream, made possible by a characteristi¬ cally liberal forgetfulness of the inherently problematic character of the relation of philosophy to political life. To invite philosophy in its authentic, Socratic incarnation into public life, allowing it to practice its comprehensive, ceaseless, aporetic questioning without rhetorical cover, is to risk either dissolving the community’s political bonds and moral devotions or provoking an outburst of populist anger that would have the effect of hardening the community’s resistance to rational instruction. On the other hand, to conscript philosophy into the service of defending the community’s principles risks politicizing and thus corrupting philosophy, surrendering its reasonable guidance in exchange for the potentially oppressive rule of doctrines and lending credence to the cynical reduction of all political thought to mere ideology. To say that liberalism more directly than any other form requires the guiding presence of political philosophy is therefore to say that it requires political philoso¬ phy in all its problematic ambiguity. To preserve its basis in rational consent and rational self-government, liberalism requires both a philosophic understanding of political life and a politically sensitive presentation of the philosophic life. It requires a stabilizing grounding in a persuasive account of the human condition and the principles of justice proper to it, and an unsettling acknowledgment of the incompleteness of human reason and of the imperative of self-criticism. Herein lies the deepest justification for our reconsideration of the political philosophy of John Locke. Whereas much present-day liberalism suffers from either an immoderate embrace or an immoderate rejection of the rationalist aspira¬ tion, Locke endures as the most successful philosophic legislator among modem thinkers, above all by virtue of his extraordinary skill in designing a stable consti¬ tutional order grounded in a deep insight into the human condition and moderated by a sensitive appreciation of the relation between philosophy and political life. Locke’s political philosophy finds its fundamental, orienting principle in the observation that the natural, unalterable condition of humankind is a condition of “mediocrity” or dividedness. Human life proper, as Locke understands it, exists in a manifold state of tension. Human beings are naturally divided between self and other, privacy and society, law and anarchy; between liberty and necessity, motion and rest, labor and ease, action and passion, possession and desire; and most profoundly, between nature and convention, science and faith, reason and will or imagination, the secular and the transcendent, life and death. It is the essence of human wisdom, Locke teaches, to accommodate oneself to the truth of this condition, to accept the discipline that it imposes and thereby to prepare oneself to achieve the measure of happiness that it permits. This is an austere wisdom. By showing us that our deepest, most powerful longings are at best imperfectly achievable and in some cases mutually incompatible, Locke shows us that our most unsettling, discomposing anxieties are firmly rooted in our natural condition. He urges upon us the sobering observation that the tides of human irrationalism are ever-recurrent, and our achievement of rational self-government in accordance with the truth of our middling condition is the object of an ongoing,

Conclusion

247

never-ending struggle. He thus prepares us to govern our anxieties, first by showing us the limits of our powers to escape or transform radically the condition that generates them. It is therefore unsurprising and even predictable from the Lockean perspective that liberals in our own time—perhaps feeling compelled by the ideologically inspired mass warfare and horrific inhumanity that marks especially the first half of the twentieth century, or perhaps feeling emboldened by the apparent triumph of liberal principles and institutions toward century’s end—would see fit to indulge their own deep longings for an unimpeachably rational doctrinal foundation or for a radical liberation from all rational or nonsubjective foundational principles. From the same perspective, it is unsurprising that others would find cause in the pronounced individualism and spreading moral laxity of contemporary liberal societies to indulge their longings for communal solidarity or classical virtue. All these parties, however, might learn from the teaching of Locke to govern even the most seemingly humane or urgent of their desires in a spirit of cautious modera¬ tion. In this spirit, communitarians and moral perfectionists might reflect on the frequency with which movements aimed at restoring the virtuous community have brought about radicalizations of the very modernity that provoked their opposition. Likewise, proponents of an immoderately rationalist foundationalism might consider that faith and poetry, like nature itself, tamen usque recurret. And liberal foundationalists and antifoundationalists alike might further reflect on the forms in which these are likely to reappear in societies that attempt to drive them alto¬ gether out of public life or that authorize the sovereignty of poetry or faith unregu¬ lated by the power of reason. The complex, multifaceted character of Locke’s presentation creates difficul¬ ties, of course, for those who would identify the core principles of Lockean liberalism with a view toward constructing a corrective response to the short¬ comings of liberalism in our time. Given Locke’s rhetorical ambiguities, one might be forgiven for believing that the major debates among contemporary liberals, pitting foundationalists against antifoundationalists and perfectionists against antiperfectionists, are already raging within Locke’s own mind. But if we are to learn what we need to learn from Locke, it is imperative that we avoid mistaking for signs of intellectual confusion or shallowness what are in fact signs of the theoretical moderation and rhetorical subtlety required by Locke’s politicalphilosophical enterprise. Locke’s notorious ambiguities represent in large measure devices to assist us in the struggle for rational self-government. They are made necessary by the middling character of the natural condition itself, by the natural diversity of the intellectual “palates” to which he must appeal, and not least by our natural weakness and resistance to the austere truth of our condition. To state it more simply, they are necessitated by the twofold character of Locke’s intention to promote as well as to explain the cause of rational self-government. Like the spokesmen of the major schools of present-day liberal thought, Locke harbors a pronounced sensitivity to the dangers inherent in the powerful human desires for unquestionable moral foundations and for moral perfection or the

248

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summum bonum. Unlike many contemporary liberals, however, Locke holds those

desires to be natural, ineradicable, and even indispensable to our moral-political health. He therefore seeks not to extirpate them but rather to educate them. With respect to the desire for foundations, Locke maintains that as we cannot eliminate all traces of uncertainty, we must acknowledge the partly conventional, experi¬ mental character of our moral-political thought. But the need to acknowledge the conventionalist element in our thinking does not entail a need to surrender to it. Although our strong desire for unshakable foundations often leads us to precipi¬ tancy and error and even to intolerance and cruelty, it also provides, when prop¬ erly moderated and disciplined, an indispensable support for the cause of rational self-government. In keeping with the Platonic tradition of political philosophy and in contrast to more dogmatic foundationalist and antifoundationalist liberals, Locke neither banishes the exponents of faith or of the poetic imagination altogether nor leaves the city altogether in their hands. There is surely a measure of poetry in Locke’s “workmanship” argument and in his argument for egalitarian natural rights more generally, but it is a rationalist poetry. As they provide partial, stabilizing appeasement for the foundationalist desire, such arguments assist us in the able management of our business, or in the practice of responsible self-govern¬ ment. They cultivate that measure and kind of rationality proper to the generality of humankind—wisdom “in the popular acceptation”—even as, for a more select audience, they point toward the achievement of a deeper, more fully self-con¬ scious form of rational liberty. A similar lesson may be learned from Locke’s governance of the perfectionist desire. Although he need yield to no present-day liberal in his concern about the dangers posed by extremist expressions of the desire for moral perfection or for the summum bonum, Locke does not permit that concern to engender in him an immoderate desire to place all substantive conceptions of human happiness or the human good upon an equal footing, let alone to exclude all such conceptions from public life. There can be no denying, of course, that the language of virtue is confined and muted in Locke’s presentation of public principles and institutions. Nor can one deny that, in placing primary emphasis on personal security, material prosperity, and bodily health, Locke focuses on means, declining to present a fully elaborated conception of happiness or the human good. Much of a rationally lived life is indeed occupied with managing necessities or warding off the various evils inherent in our natural condition, and the nature of perfect, complete human happiness is inevitably a controversial matter, admitting of a plurality of possibili¬ ties. Nonetheless, rational action does not consist, in Locke’s understanding, simply or ultimately of joyless, ceaseless, Sisyphean exertion, and the nature of happiness as an affirmative experience is not simply relative. In their justified concern about the degree of moral dissolution characteristic of contemporary liberal societies, perfectionist liberals need to consider that just as there is a measure of rhetorical cover in Locke’s apparently dogmatic foun¬ dationalist arguments, so too there is more than meets the eye in his seeming endorsement of a Hobbesian antiperfectionism. However restless, ceaseless, and

Conclusion

249

laborious it may be, rational action in Locke’s conception provides, if not a final or permanent, a nonetheless genuine relief from pain and from our subjection to harsh natural necessities, and thus prepares the achievement of a condition genu¬ inely worthy of affirmation. If Locke teaches us to be, like Tocqueville’s Ameri¬ cans, restless amid our prosperity, he also teaches us to reflect at the end of the day upon the deeper prosperity that underlies and redeems our laborious restless¬ ness. For rational labor as Locke conceives of it includes rational reflection on our true natural condition, and not only provides a measure of relief from physical or material necessity but above all relieves our most profound mental anxieties. This fundamental happiness in a serene, self-composed, self-possessing affirmation of the ultimate sufficiency of our natural provision not only makes bearable our daily labors but also makes possible the experience of other, rarer pleasures, such as the pleasure of genuine rational friendship or that closely related pleasure which seems to have held the greatest charm for Locke himself, the pleasure of rational inquiry into the nature of things. From the Lockean perspective, the freedom for which liberals strive need not be understood as an exercise in amoral acquisitiveness or self-expression, nor, more fundamentally, as an inherently immoderate, willful rebellion against a morally indifferent, arbitrarily confining natural condition. The natural condition is indeed harsh and aversive. But through the employment of rational labor, we can come to see that it is not simply so. Although it denies us absolute certainty, final moral perfection, or total liberation, nature yet rules us legitimately by allowing us a share in ruling ourselves. It provides the materials of our happiness and demands that we but develop them. Thus reason is “our only Star and com¬ pass,” and it is something more. More than the instrument for discovering where our happiness lies, reason or its exercise is itself the fundamental, indispensable constituent of human happiness. This fundamental happiness in rational selfpossession, more elevated than Hobbesian striving and more accessible than Platonic philosophizing, enables us to govern our basest appetites as well as our grandest, most expansive longings. Herein lies the true “dignity and excellency of a rational creature. ” This, for Locke, is the true foundation of human rights and liberties, as it is the indispensable human perfection to which liberal political and pedagogical institutions should aspire.

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'

■

*

Index abstraction, power of, 89, 125, 130, 144 Acosta, Jose de, 115-16 Adam, 187-88, 190 Arendt, Hannah, 105n57 Aristophanes, 242n59 Aristotle, 20, 57, 213, 218; empirical approach of, 77, 105n58; on friendship, 123, 158, 160; and liberalism, ix, 10-11; and scholasticism, 68, 108, 117, 123 Ashcraft, Richard, 14, 20, 22, 31n61, 33n79, 114 Ayers, Michael, 90, 94

Butler, Melissa, 202, 240n46 Cain, 39 Cambridge school, ix, 14-19, 21-22, 24 Christianity, 13-14, 21-24, 42-51, 146-49; and liberty, 186-90; and original sin, 187-88, 190; pacific, 46, 181-86; reasonable, 46, 180-90, 227-29; Socinian variant of, 23 Clarke, Edward, 159, 211 Colman, John, 34n94, 142 communitarianism, 5, 8, 150, 169, 184, 245 conjugal society. See marriage consent, 25, 37-38, 46, 107, 115, 139, 180, 181, 186, 192, 200, 208-09, 213-14, 245-46 conventionalism, 17-19, 142, 152, 234, 235; as danger to morality, 24-25, 67, 74-75, 100-01, 112; Locke’s moderate form of, 75-85,

Bacon, Francis, 12, 24, 72, 85, 153— 55, 162, 183, 195, 244n98; appeal to charity of, 82, 155, 183; and critique of premodern science, 20, 83, 151; and experimental science, 85, 92, 153; and natural-historical method, 67, 76-77, 96, 101, 108, 179; New Atlantis of, 99, 232-34, 240n51 Blankenhom, David, 199 Bloom, Allan, x Boyle, Robert, 79, 85, 93 Budziszewski, J., 2, 5, 64n43 Burke, Edmund, 219

221

corpuscularian theory, 67-68, 85-101 Cox, Richard, 115 Cudworth, Damaris, 175n52 death. See mortality

263

264 Declaration of Independence, U.S., 179, 236nl Descartes, Rene, 10, 24, 105n58, 188, 233 desire: antisocial, 113-21, 200; men¬ tal, 120-29, 156, 163; “natural” versus “fantastical,” 110, 113; so¬ cial, 122-25; and uneasiness, 110, 118, 140-43, 145, 163-64, 166, 168 divine workmanship, 41-52, 146-47, 248 divorce, 204-07 Dunn, John, 14, 22, 23, 32n66, 107, 135n52, 150 Edwards, John, 43 England, 14, 37, 112, 212, 219-20 equality, 57-58, 119, 124, 185, 19697, 214, 216; natural, 38-39, 41, 107, 196; in rationality, 51, 61, 128, 169, 171, 217, 227-28; of rights, 119, 145, 170, 214, 216, 227; sexual, 202, 204, 240nn46, 51; species, 50, 53 eros, 150, 163-64, 207; see also love executive power, 108, 123, 212, 221— 26 family, 109, 113, 180, 196-208, 226, 228 Federalist, The, 11, 17, 81, 153, 179, 210-12

federative power, 218 Filmer, Sir Robert, 38, 114, 197, 204, 223 freedom (liberty), 152, 156, 161, 163, 170, 212; civil or political, 3, 193, 209; and law, 191, 194, 210; natu¬ ral, 38, 56, 107, 125, 128, 13031, 200; and preservation, 192, 194, 210; radical, 153, 154, 228; rational, 3, 12, 24, 130, 142-44, 166, 181, 186-89, 191, 197, 214, 220-21, 224, 226, 228, 230, 245; of will, 139-45 friendship, 123-24, 157-60, 169, 18485, 207, 249 Fukuyama, Francis, 238n30

Index Galston, William, 2, 10, Gibson, James, 90 God: attributes of, 42, 48-50, 147, 186-87; as creator and provider, 72, 96, 117, 123, 158, 165-66, 181, 188-89, 195-96; human knowledge of, 42-49; as lawgiver, 127, 145-46, 167, 182, 185, 187, 190 Goethe, 23 good, 3, 140-42, 144, 213, 218, 248; liberalism and the, 2-6; natural versus moral, 49-50, 145-46, 149; public, 18, 221; in relation to right, 138; see also happiness government, divided powers of, 222-25, 239n38 Grant, George, 30n44 Grant, Ruth, 25, 31n62, 54, 64n52, 152 happiness, 3, 24, 84, 124, 137-72, 183, 213; desire for, 49, 147; and hope for afterlife, 127-28, 145-49, 189-90; human capacity for, 123, 129, 156-57; and moderation, 208, 235, 246-47, 249; and morality, 49-50, 56-58, 145-49; and ratio¬ nal life, 160-68, 228, 232; secular, 148-68, 188; and problem of relativism, 149-55 Harrington, James, ix Hegel, G. W. F., 238n30 Heidegger, Martin, 7, 103n23 Heisenberg, Werner, 104n50 Hobbes, Thomas, 13, 24, 116, 194, 210, 248; on freedom, 139, 143; on happiness, 152, 163, 249; hedonism of, 140, 156; political absolutism of, 221, 223; on pri¬ macy of power, 150, 162, 187; on state of nature, 108, 111, 114, 120, 221

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 29n36 Hooker, Richard, 39, 41, 108, 124 Hume, David, 11 Huyler, Jerome, 25, 30n49 imagination, 89, 112, 125-29, 131,

Index

144, 151, 153 individualism, 2, 101, 123, 150, 159, 204, 212 industry. See labor innatism, 39-41, 60, 68, 80, 108 interest, 84, 120, 122, 149, 183, 19092, 195, 211, 229 Jaffa, Harry V., 30n47 Jefferson, Thomas, 153, 171, 226 Jesus, 147, 182-83, 185-86, 236nl2 judicial power, 243n81 Julian, 44 justice, 4-5, 8, 116, 119-20, 150-51, 171, 179, 201, 204, 211, 213, 215-16, 227, 245; divine, 49, 190; foundation of, 38-39, 41, 52-54; and happiness, 137-38, 152, 168— 70; and interest, 192, 230; natural, 17, 38, 183; and natural rights, 37-38, 191; and property, 195, 232 Kant, Immanuel, 59 Kautz, Steven, 27n3 labor, 129-30, 155, 193-96, 246, 249; painfulness of, 118, 121, 150, 156, 188, 190; productivity of, 74-75, 117, 161, 170, 191, 195, 217; and property rights, 170, 193, 216 Lampert, Laurence, 32n69, 176n67, 244n95 Laslett, Peter, 14, 38-39, 74 law of nature, 38-39, 41, 50, 100, 108, 147, 170, 217-21, 229 legislative power, 115,208-25 liberalism: antifoundationalist variant of, 5-9, 54, 82, 247; contemporary difficulties of, ix; neutralist variant of, 3-5, 8; perfectionist variant of, 2-3, 6, 11-12, 15, 25, 247, 248; and rationalism, 8-13, 179, 223, 245-46; and republicanism, 11, 153, 210-11, 219 liberty. See freedom Lincoln, Abraham, 30n47, 219, 236nl Locke, John: claim to innovation of, 19-21, 43; works of: On the Con¬

265 duct of the Understanding, 12, 20, 130; An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 19, 48, 75, 96,

118, 126, 129-30, 140-43, 147, 157-58, 161, 165, 167, 169, 179, 188, 193, 224, 234; critical pur¬ pose of, 39-41, 51, 68, 82, 214, 219; historical method of, 58, 67, 108, 109; on the limits of the understanding, 45-46, 55, 93; ver¬ sus premodern science, 20, 71, 117, 121, 141, 230; First Treatise of Government, 38, 41, 42, 126, 195; A Letter Concerning Tolera¬ tion, 23, 121, 181-82, 184, 190; Questions Concerning the Law of Nature, 127; The Reasonableness of Christianity, 45-49, 55, 151, 182, 190; Second Treatise of Gov¬ ernment: on justice, 38-39, 50,

53-54, 57, 169, 220; on the origin of political society, 115, 122; on the state of nature, 56, 107, 109, 110-11, 113, 128, 184; Some Thoughts Concerning Education,

93, 119, 124, 129, 143, 156-59, 192, 194-97, 208, 231; Two Trea¬ tises of Government, 20, 48, 7475, 81, 108, 118, 123, 126, 12830, 170, 191-92, 195-96, 202, 204, 214, 225, 229; as civil dis¬ course, 38-39, 219; general pur¬ pose of, 37, 208; as theoretical politics, 54, 208; vigiliant spirit of, 55, 230 love, 123-24, 157-59, 198, 199, 20610, 226 Macedo, Stephen, 2 Machiavelli, Niccolo, x, 8-11, 18, 24, 89, 119, 130, 162, 171, 188, 201, 220, 222, 229 Mackie, J. L., 84 MacPherson, C. B., 13-14, 244n83 Madison, James, 211 Mandelbaum, Maurice, 90 Mansfield, Harvey C., Jr., 64n51, 209 marriage, 158, 198-208 Marx, Karl, 15, 130, 135n55

266 “Mediocrity,” Locke’s doctrine of, 154, 169, 207, 246; and human dividedness, 157, 235; and the incompleteness of human knowl¬ edge, 161, 221, 235-36 Mehta, Uday Singh, 134n41, 244n99 Mill, J. S„ 241n55, 245 Miller, Eugene, 74, 126 miracles, 44-45 modern political philosophy, x, 2, 1112, 21, 24, 37, 92, 111-12, 131, 154 modes, ideas of, 69; mixed, 141 Molyneux, William, 46, 159-60 Montaigne, Michel de, 153, 155-56, 171, 191, 235; on friendship, 160, 207; on philosophy, 161-64; rela¬ tion to Locke of, 24-26; versus premodern perfectionism, 153, 208 Montesquieu, Charles, Baron de, ix, 10-11, 153, 166, 191, 219-20, 243n81 morality, 39-40, 127, 151-52; danger of modern science to, 92, 99, 139; demonstrative science of, 45, 5260; divine foundation of, 127, 185; happiness as object of, 49-50, 5658, 137, 145, 182-83 mortality, 127-28, 146, 167, 187-91, 235 nature, 70-96, 112-13, 131, 138, 234, 235; austerity of, 68, 74-75, 80, 117, 141, 155, 170, 207, 213, 249; beneficence of, 138, 150, 154, 165, 201; human, 39, 50-52, 57, 58, 72, 83-85, 93, 100-01, 116, 154, 217; mysteriousness of, 70, 74, 76, 83, 85, 165, 232; ordinary course of, 44, 73, 78, 79, 95, 96, 99-100, 151, 153, 170; study of, 51-52, 60, 67, 75-78, 85, 96, 97, 100, 155, 161-62, 195; see also state of nature natural condition. See state of nature natural law. See law of nature natural religion, 48, 186, 229 natural rights. See rights, natural natural species, 67-85, 90, 108

Index

Newton, Isaac, 79, 94, 105n58 Nietzsche, Friedrich, ix, 7-8, 10, 92 Oakeshott, Michael, 7 Paine, Thomas, 219 Pangle, Thomas, 23, 34n94, 115, 134n41, 160-62, 228 partisanship, 120-29, 182, 196, 204, 213, 226, 229, 230, 231; demo¬ cratic/egalitarian form of, 7, 214, 216, 227-28; irrationality of, 8, 120-22; religious, 121, 127-28 Pascal, Blaise, 147-49 passion. See desire patriotism, 127-28, 213, 242n67 Paul, Saint, 148, 158 perfectionism, 24, 153, 166-68, 221 person. See self philosophy, 55, 167, 218, 227-28, 230, 245; and happiness, 155, 161; self-concealment of, 21, 231; Socratic, 160, 164 Plato, 4, 9-10, 57, 105n58, 150, 162, 213, 233, 235, 249 Pocock, J. G. A., 14 Polin, Raymond, 238n30 prerogative power, 122, 221-23 preservation, 134n34, 137, 151, 152, 177n78, 192-95, 201, 203, 205, 209, 214, 215, 226 Proast, Jonas, 45 property, 3, 116, 118-19, 121, 169— 70, 180, 190-96, 197, 200, 208, 210-11, 214, 217, 219, 222, 232 Publius, 1, 81-82, 179 Rabieh, Michael, 174n32 Rahe, Paul, 32n71, 34n94, 223 Rapaczynski, Andrzej, 25, 140, 238n30 rationalism, 6, 8-13, 112, 213, 221, 225, 227; political, 22-26, 214 rationality. See reason Rawls, John, 3-6, 50, 138 Raz, Joseph, 2, 29n33 reason (rationality): and faith, 42-51, 146-49, 230; and foundations of morality, 45-47, 59-60, 145; law

Index

267

of, as law of nature, 38, 50, 109, 114, 147; natural weakness of, 26, 111-13, 117, 120, 125, 127, 128, 181; political presumption of, 57, 61, 170-71, 208, 214-17; and pru¬ dence, 219-21, 223, 225-26; as purpose of human life, 12, 26, 160-62, 168, 249; and will, 14045; see also freedom, rational; happiness, and rational life; rights, and rational agency rebellion. See resistance religion, 5, 12, 43, 127-28, 180-81, 184-85, 191, 213; see also Chris¬ tianity; natural religion representation, 180, 209-18 resistance, right of, 203, 211, 225-26, 229 revelation: natural, 48-50, 165, 186; supernatural, 42-46, 50, 183, 186 Revolution of 1688, 8, 37 rights: individual, 3, 124, 180, 191, 204, 245; natural human, 3, 17, 37-39, 41, 48, 49, 50, 51, 57-59, 61, 111-12, 119, 169-70, 179, 191, 205, 216, 218-19, 227, 248; and rational agency, 27, 50-51, 56, 117, 119, 129, 131, 138, 14445, 180, 191, 205-06, 215, 218 Rorty, Richard, 5-8, 135n55 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 74; on native self, 110-13, 198, 239n42; versus Locke on happiness, 138, 150, 157; on religious tolerance, 184-85 Royal Society, 79

Scipio, 130 self: native, 108-12, 116, 130; natural formation of, 108-29; and personal identity, 129, 139, 144, 173nl8, 206 self-evident truth, 39-41, 51, 219 self-ownership, 12, 130-31, 144, 163, 167-68, 170-71, 189, 192, 200, 206, 226 Shaftesbury, third earl of, 101n5 Simmons, A. John, 25, 57 Skinner, Quentin, 14-21, 60 slavery, 210 Socrates, 2, 9, 17, 90, 150, 160-64, 168, 235, 245 state of nature, 26-27, 38, 68, 107-31, 137, 154, 171, 209, 224, 249; empirical character of, 54, 59, 107- 08; inconveniences of, 56, 108- 09, 114-29, 151,152, 180, 182, 184, 198-99, 221-23 Stillingfleet, Reverend Edward, 94, 172nl7 Strauss, Leo, 4, 13-14, 23-24, 34n96, 60, 74, 92, 150, 233 Straussian reading of Locke, ix-x, 1517, 21-24 substances, ideas of, 69-70, 73, 78, 80-81, 89-90, 94-95, 142, 150, 165, 234 substantial forms. See natural species summum bonum, 20, 26, 128, 146, 149, 162, 166, 208, 221, 248 summum malum, 127 Sydenham, Thomas, 79

Salkever, Stephen, 2, Schaefer, David, 34n92 Schaub, Diana, 241n57 scholasticism, 20, 90, 123, 230; Locke’s rejection of, 68, 83, 108, 121, 229; dogmatism of, 76-77, 80, 83, 96, 112, 117 Schouls, Peter, 25, 143 science: historical method of, 26, 6786, 96-100, 107-08, 142, 179; natural, 19-20, 82-83, 95, 153, 161, 231-32; pedagogical signifi¬ cance of, 235

Tarcov, Nathan, 21-22, 25, 34n96, 143, 150, 239n38 taxes, 216-17 technology, 12, 98, 161, 167, 227, 230-32, 235 teleology, 12, 168, 218; Locke’s criti¬ cism of, 20-21, 25, 95, 108, 111, 138, 150, 153; and premodern sci¬ ence, 85, 90, 108; see also natural species; summum bonum Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 20, 43-44, 108 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 11, 153,

268 174n29, 216, 241n53, 242n58, 249 tolerance, 3, 4, 12, 46, 184-86, 237nl5 Tuck, Richard, 14 Tully, James, 14, 32n66, 51, 55 tyranny, 4, 121-22, 168, 192, 209, 211, 229, 230 understanding. See reason U.S. Constitution, 1, 179 Vega, Garcilasso de la, 126 virtue, 116, 123-24, 151, 156, 165, 185, 192, 195-96, 201, 212, 21517, 248; and interest, 147-49, 155, 169, 190; and liberal practice, 2,

Index

6, 8; and premodern philosophy, 20, 164, 227 Waldron, Jeremy, 59 war, 114-16 Weinberger, Jerry, 244n95 Whitehead, A. N., 102nll, 105n58 Wilson, James Q., 81 Wilson, Margaret, 93 Wootton, David, 33n79 Yolton, John, 77, 82, 141 Zuckert, Michael, 25, 34n96, 44, 103n23, 237n20

About the Author Peter C. Myers is associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He received his doctorate from Loyola University, Chi¬ cago. He has published several essays on Locke and writes also on American political thought and American literature.

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