Description
Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy
I
LOCKE AND THE FRONTIERS OF COMMON SENSE
A good portrait of Locke would require an elaborate background. His is not
a figure to stand statuesquely in a void: the pose might not seem grand
enough for bronze or marble. Rather he should be painted in the manner of
the Dutch masters, in a sunny interior, scrupulously furnished with all
the implements of domestic comfort and philosophic enquiry: the Holy Bible
open majestically before him, and beside it that other revelation–the
terrestrial globe. His hand might be pointing to a microscope set for
examining the internal constitution of a beetle: but for the moment his
eye should be seen wandering through the open window, to admire the
blessings of thrift and liberty manifest in the people so worthily busy in
the market-place, wrong as many a monkish notion might be that still
troubled their poor heads. From them his enlarged thoughts would easily
pass to the stout carved ships in the river beyond, intrepidly setting
sail for the Indies, or for savage America. Yes, he too had travelled, and
not only in thought. He knew how many strange nations and false religions
lodged in this round earth, itself but a speck in the universe. There were
few ingenious authors that he had not perused, or philosophical
instruments that he had not, as far as possible, examined and tested; and
no man better than he could understand and prize the recent discoveries of
"the incomparable Mr Newton". Nevertheless, a certain uneasiness in that
spare frame, a certain knitting of the brows in that aquiline countenance,
would suggest that in the midst of their earnest eloquence the
philosopher’s thoughts might sometimes come to a stand. Indeed, the
visible scene did not exhaust the complexity of his problem
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