scriptures. With nothing to disturb the serenity of his mind, he found himself happy in the retirement which he had chosen, and in the society of lady Masham, a woman of superior virtue, of great information, and of contemplative habits of mind, whose son had the happiness to be educated and improved under the eye and in the principles of her illustrious friend. Thus situated in the hospitable mansion of Oates, as if in his own house,, he saw the gradual approach of death with calmness and resignation. Seeing his legs swell, he became sensible that dissolution was not distant, and after receiving the sacrament with fervor and piety, he told his sorrowing friend, lady Masham, that he had lived long enough, that he thanked God for having passed his days so happily, and that life appeared to him mere vanity. He expired with little pain, 28th October, 1704, in his 73d year, and was buried in the church at Oates, where a decent monument, with an inscription written by himself, marks the spot. His works are, besides the Essay in 2 vols. 8vo.-Letters on Toleration, 4to.-Treatise on Civil Government, 8vo.-Thoughts concerning Education, 12mo.-Considerations on lowering the Interest, and raising the Value of Money-Reasonableness of Christianity, 8vo.-Posthumous works, &c.-Paraphrase on St. Paul's Epistles, 4to.-Letters, &c. all which have been edited together, 3 vols. folio and 9 vols. 8vo. On the character of this great and good man little need be said. The virtues and the charities of human nature he possessed in the highest degree, and as a philosopher, a christian, a politician, and a man, he claims the first rank in the admiration and in the homage of posterity. With judicious taste and becoming simplicity, queen Caroline erected in her pavilion at Richmond, his bust with those of Bacon, Newton, and Clarke, as the four principal philosophers of which England may boast with real pride and satisfaction when she enumerates her departed heroes. Lempriere's Univ. Biog. را TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE THOMAS, EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY, Baron HERBERT, of Cardiff, Lord Ross, of Kendal, Par, Fitzhugh, Marmion, St. Quintin, and Shurland; Lord President of His Majesty's most honorable privy council, and Lord Lieutenant of the County of Wilts, and of South Wales. MY LORD, THIS treatise, which is grown up under your lordship's eye, and has ventured into the world by your order, does now, by a natural kind of right, come to your lordship for that protection, which you feveral years fince promifed it. It is not that I think any name, how great foever, fet at the beginning of a book, will be able to cover the faults that are to be found in it. Things in print must stand and fall by their own worth, or the reader's fancy. But there being nothing more to be defired for truth, than a fair, unprejudiced hearing, nobody is more likely to procure me that, than your lordship, who are allowed to have got fo intimate an acquaintance with her, in her more retired receffes. Your lordship is known to have so far advanced your speculations in the most abstract and general knowledge of things, beyond the ordinary reach, or common methods, that your allowance and approbation of the defign of this treatise, will at least preserve it from being condemned without reading; and will prevail to have those parts a little weighed, which might otherwise, perhaps, be thought to deserve no confideration, for being fomewhat out of the common road. The imputation of novelty is a terrible charge amongst those who judge of men's heads, as they do of their perukes, by the fashion; and can allow none to be right, but the received doctrines. Truth fcarce ever yet carried it by vote any where at its first appearance: new opinions are always suspected, and usually oppofed, without any other reason, but because they are not already common. But truth, like gold, is not the lefs fo for being newly brought out of the mine. It is trial and examination must give it price, and not any antique fashion: and though it be not yet current by the public ftamp; yet it may, for all that, be as old as nature, and is certainly not the lefs genuine. Your lordship can give great and convincing instances of this, whenever you please to oblige the public with fome of those large and comprehenfive discoveries you have made of truths hitherto unknown, unless to some few, from whom your lordship has been pleased not wholly to conceal them. This alone were a fufficient reason, were there no other, why I should dedicate this Effay to your lordship; and its having fome little correspondence with some parts of that nobler and vast system of the sciences your lordship has made fo new, exact, and instructive a draught of, I think it glory enough, if your lordship permit me to boast, that here and there I have fallen into some thoughts not wholly different from yours. If your lordship think fit, that, by your encouragement, this should appear in the world, I hope it may be a reason, some time or other, to lead your lordship farther; and you will allow me to say, that you here give the world an earnest of something, that, if they can bear with this, will be truly worth their expectation. This, my lord, shows what a prefent I here make to your lordship; just such as the poor man does to his rich and great neighbor, by whom the basket of flowers, or fruit, is not ill taken, though he has more plenty of his own growth, and in much greater perfection. Worthless things receive a value, when they are made the offerings of respect, esteem, and gratitude: these you have given me fo mighty and peculiar reafons to have, in the highest degree, for your lordship, that if they can add a price to what they go along with, proportionable to their own greatness, I can with confidence brag, I here make your lordship the richest present you ever received. This I am fure, I am under the greatest ob ligations to feek all occafions to acknowledge a long train of favors I have received from your lordship: favors, though great and important in themselves, yet made much more fo by the forwardness, concern, and kindness, and other obliging circumstances, that never failed to accompany them. To all this, you are pleased to add that which gives yet more weight and relish to all the rest: you vouchsafe to continue me in fome degrees of your esteem, and allow me a place in your good thoughts: I had almost said friendship. This, my lord, your words and actions so constantly show on all occafions, even to others when I am absent, that it is not vanity in me to mention what every body knows: but it would be want of good manners, not to acknowledge what fo many are witneffes of, and every day tell me, I am indebted to your lordship for. I wifh they could as easily assist my gratitude, as they convince me of the great and growing engagements it has to your lordship. This I am fure, I should write of the understanding without having any, if I were not extremely sensible of them, and did not lay hold on this opportunity to teftify to the world, how much I am obliged to be, and how much I am, My LORD, Your Lordship's most humble, and moft Obedient Servant, DORSET COURT, JOHN LOCKE. THE EPISTLE TO THE READER. READER, I HERE put into thy hands what has been the diversion of some of my idle and heavy hours: if it has the good luck to prove so of any of thine, and thou hast but half so much pleasure in reading, as I had in writing it, thou wilt as little think thy money, as I do my pains, ill bestowed. Mistake not this, for a commendation of my work; nor conclude, because I was pleased with the doing of it, that therefore I am fondly taken with it now it is done. He that hawks at larks and sparrows, has no less sport, though a much. less considerable quarry, than he that flies at nobler game; and he is little acquainted with the subject of this treatise, the UNDERSTANDING, who does not know that as it is the most elevated faculty of the soul, so it is 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 pleasure. Every step the mind takes in its progress towards knowledge makes some discovery, which is not only new, but the best too, for the time at least. For the understanding, like the eye, judging of objects only by its own sight, cannot but be pleased with what it discovers, having less regret for what has escaped it, because it is unknown. Thus he who has raised himself above the alms-basket, and not content to live |