002 The scholastic logic derived from Aristotle and based on the syllogism. Locke makes a strong attack on it in the Essay, IV, xvii: "Syllogism, at best, is but the art of fencing with the little knowledge we have, without making any addition to it." -- F.W.G.
003 That is, of the university (and so regularly in Conduct). -- F.W.G.
004 Francis Bacon. -- F.W.G.
005 In fact the passage occurs in the preface to the Macrna Instau ratio, of which the Novum Organum was intended to be the second part. -- F.W.G.
006 That is, which was received, accepted, in common use. -- F.W.G.
007 The point is that syllogistic reasoning, being deductive, is an inadequate instrument for empirical investigation, which requires also the use of inductive inference. -- F.W.G.
008 Here and regularly in Conduct "parts" means "abilities." -- F.W.G.
009 Locke was well aware of the power of both heredity and educa tion, and his comments on them suggest, as here, that he was un certain which was the stronger. See also Thoughts, Secs. 1, 66, 101-102. -- F.W.G.
010 See Essay, "Epistle to the Reader," and II, xxix; in the former he writes: "This, I think may fitly be called a determinate or de termined idea, when, such as it is at any time objectively in the mind, and so determined there, it is annexed and without variation determined to a name or articulate sound, which is to be steadily the sign of that very same object of the mind or determinate idea." On the ambiguity of Locke's use of "idea" see the Introduction, pp. ll-12. -- F.W.G.
011 That is, links in a chain of inference. -- F.W.G.
012 The text has "untractable," but this is contrary to the sense. -- F.W.G.
013 Gen. 47:27. -- F.W.G.
014 A group of islands in the western Pacific, also known as the Ladrone Islands. -- F.W.G.
015 That is, his range of intercourse. -- F.W.G.
016 I Thess. 5:21. -- F.W.G.
017 J. W. Adamson, The Educational Writings of John Locke (2nd ed.; Cambridge, England: 1912), has "arrant," which is a variant form of "errant." An "errant" or "arrant" robber was one who roamed the countryside and seas thus well known. The word came to mean "downright," "thorough," "genuine," and did not necessarily carry a pejorative significance. -- F.W.G.
018 The Court was at Whitehall at this time. -- F.W.G.
019 That is, "trickster." -- F.W.G.
020 See footnote 10. -- F.W.G.
021 The importance of practice and habit is a constant theme of Thoughts, for instance, in Secs. 66 and 107. -- F.W.G.
022 An allegorical story conveying a lesson or moral. -- F.W.G.
023 That is, from the Law Courts to the Royal Exchange, London's financial centre. -- F.W.G.
024 That is, in Essay, III, especially ix-xi.
025 That is, arguing from premisses. On this subject see also Essay, IV, xx, especially 8-10. -- F.W.G.
026 Essay, IV, xii, 12-13. -- F.W.G.
027 That is, "obstructions." -- F.W.G.
028 That is, in the next section. -- F.W.G.
029 Locke's proposal assumes that training acquired within one subject can either be transferred to others or generalised into principles of intellectual activity; in fact this is possible only within fairly narrow limits. -- F.W.G.
030 See footnote 29. -- F.W.G.
031 See Introduction, pp. 9-10. For Locke's account of probability, see Essay, IV, xv, xvi, and xx. -- F.W.G.
032 Locke refers to the formal disputations which were regularly practised in the universities of his time. By "one topical argument" he means an argument restricted to a single "topic" or general prin ciple. See Essay, IV, xvii, 5. -- F.W.G.
033 That is, "relationships," "dispositions" (as also in sections 15, 19, 26, etc.). -- F.W.G.
034 That is, besides mathematics. -- F.W.G.
035 That is, "accustoming." -- F.W.G.
036 That is, in the previous section. -- F.W.G.
037 Locke is writing from personal experience here as a result of his travels in France. He refers to the French Protestants or Huguenots, who in 1685 had been deprived of their civil and religious liberties by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. -- F.W.G.
038 This is the definition of knowledge which Locke proposes in Essay, IV, i, 2: "Knowledge then seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, of any of our ideas. In this alone it consists." -- F.W.G.
039 "A man who decides a case after hearing only one side of it cannot himself be called just, even though the decision is just." A sentence very similar to this occurs in Seneca's Medea, 11. l99-200. -- F.W.G.
040 Compare Thoughts, Sec. 94: "The great work of a governor [i.e. tutor] is to fashion the carriage and form the mind; to settle in his pupil good habits and the principles of virtue and wisdom; to give by little and little a view of mankind, and work him into a love and imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy; and in the prosecu tion of it to give him vigour, activity and industry. The studies which he sets him on are but, as it were, the exercises of his faculties and employment of his time, to keep him from sauntering and idleness, to teach him application and accustom him to take pains, and to give him some little taste of what his own industry must perfect." -- F.W.G.
041 That is, a mere record of facts or events. The word "history" in Locke's time could mean a systematic record of facts in any field of knowledge. -- F.W.G.
042 That is, by an inductive argument from particular facts to general truths. -- F.W.G.
043 That is, "confuse" (the derivation is uncertain). -- F.W.G.
044 See above, footnote 10. -- F.W.G.
045 That is, "relationships," "dispositions." -- F.W.G.
046 Compare section 24, p. 85 "second-hand or implicit knowledge"; that is, knowledge which cannot be made explicit because it is not his own but is taken on trust. -- F.W.G.
052 An excellent piece of advice which is fully in accord with modern principles of methodology. Cf. section 36 on correct formulation of the problem. -- F.W.G.
048 That is, "opinionatedness." "Opiniatrety" seems to be the correct form of the word; the text has "opiniatrity." -- F.W.G.
049 According to the sixteenth-centurv Swiss physician, Paracelsus, salt, sulphur, and mercury were the main constituents of the human body; sickness was due to their dissociation from one another or the lack of balance between them. The "philosopher's stone" was supposed by mediaeval alchemists to be capable of transmuting base metals into gold. -- F.W.G.
050 The reference is to the account of creation in Genesis 1 and 2. The first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, were thought by the Jews to be the work of Aloses, and they were commonly referred to as "the books of Moses." -- F.W.G.
051 Section 12. -- F.W.G.
052 "Things are unwilling (do not allow themselves) to be badly handled." -- F.W.G.
053 "Things are unwilling (do not allow themselves) to be wrongly understood." -- F.W.G.
054 The last sentences of this paragraph are an emphatic assertion of Locke's empirical position. -- F.W.G.
055 Actually in his Epistles, II, i. -- F.W.G.
056 "The voice of the people is the voice of God." The Latin words occur in a letter from the eighth century scholar Alcuin to the Emperor Charlemagne. -- F.W.G.
057 Compare Shakespeare, Coriolanus, IV, i, 1: "The beast with many heads butts me away"; and Massinger, The Unnatural Combat, III, ii: "Fury of the many-headed monster, the giddy multi tude." -- F.W.G.
058 That is, "finicky." -- F.W.G.
059 Compare Rev. 13:17: "The mark, even the name, of the beast." -- F.W.G.
060 For instance, in chemical experiments where two substances are brought together in order to observe the reaction between them. "Patient" here means the recipient of an activity, that which undergoes it. -- F.W.G.
061 Locke is not suggesting that facts and opinions are identical, but that opinions can be observed and recorded as fact. -- F.W.G.
062 Here and in the sentence above, "All that can be recorded in writing are only facts or reasonings," Locke seems to disregard the aesthetic potentiality of language. See Thoughts, Sec. 174, on poetry. -- F.W.G.
063 See Introduction, p. 19.
064 See footnote 46. -- F.W.G.
065 Locke regularly makes utility a criterion of value; see also Thoughts, Secs. 197, 201 ff. -- F.W.G.
066 That is, "meaningless." -- F.W.G.
067 Sections 13 and 20. -- F.W.G.
068 Horace, Ars Poetica, 11. 39-40:
Et versate diu quid ferre recusent,
Quid valeant humeri.
"Consider for a long time what the shoulders refuse to bear and
what they have the strength for." -- F.W.G.069 This is the punctuation of the text; it requires that "to" be understood before "a full bent." The editions of Fowler and Adamson have: "The understanding should be brought to the difficult and knotty parts of knowledge, that try the strength of thought and a full bent of the mind, by insensible degrees." -- F.W.G.
07O There appears to be some play on words here; dignitas is the Latin equivalent of the Greed axioma, and "dignity" could be regarded as a synonym for axiom -- it was so used by Sir Thomas Browne. -- F.W.G.
071 Essay, III, especially x.
072 Phrases used by the followers of the Peripatetic or Aristotelian philosophy. -- F.W.G.
073 That is, "eke." -- F.W.G.
074 See Essay, II, xxiii, 2.
075 On simple and complex ideas, see Essay, II, ii and xii. -- F.W.G.
076 That is, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, of which Conduct was intended to be the last part; especially Book II. -- F.W.G.
077 Compare Thoughts, Sec. 77 etc.
078 In the logical vocabulary of Locke's time "distinction" was the determining of different meanings in an ambiguous term or sentence; "division" was the determining of different species within the same genus. The former was used more especially in the sphere of language, the latter in that of natural objects. Locke does not make his meaning entirely clear, but he is evidently cautioning his read ers against excessive nicety in (verbal) distinction and commending the precise observation of natural differences in things, though even the latter, he points out, can be taken too far, so that it "will run us, if followed, into particulars...." Here, as so often, he has in mind the hair-splitting arguments of contemporary disputation. -- F.W.G.
079 That is, "fitting." -- F.W.G.
080 That is, Being." -- F.W.G.
081 See footnote 10. -- F.W.G.
082 See footnote 10. -- F.W.G.
083 Terms used in disputation: "fend" means "argue." -- F.W.G.
084 Despite what he says here, Locke regularly, and often delight fully, uses imagery in his writing; however, he was evidently aware of its dangers and would no doubt excuse himself on the grounds that his "borrowed and allusive ideas" do in fact follow "real and solid truth." -- F.W.G.
085 See Essay, IV, xvi.
086 The text and Fowler, op. cit., use "faint"; but Adamson, op. cit., has "feint," the past participle of "feign." -- F.W.G.
087 Here, as in section 11, the meaning is "impartiality." -- F.W.G.
088 That is, "makes the short-sighted [into] bigots and the warier [into] sceptics." -- F.W.G.
089 Compare Socrates' belief that he was the wisest of men because, though ignorant, he was aware of his ignorance. -- F.W.G.
090 These were different sects of physicians, whose theories derived from Graeco-Roman medicine. Dogmatists (or rationalists) based their work on rational deduction from a priori principles rather than from observation and experiment. Methodists, apparently so called because they adopted a new method which was different from either the dogmatic or the empirical, believed that health was a balance between tension and relaxation. "Chemists" used drugs or chemicals to effect their cures; Locke is probably referring more particularly to the followers of Paracelsus (see footnote 49). It should be noted that Locke himself practised as a physician. -- F.W.G.
091 The great fifth century B.C. Greek physician from the island of Cos, off the coast of Asia Minor. -- F.W.G.
092 Literally, "yawning"; here, "laziness." -- F.W.G.
093 Fortunatus was a hero of the chapbooks (popular storybooks) of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; he was presented by Fortune with a purse which was constantly replenished. -- F.W.G.
094 "It increases in strength as it goes" (Vergil, Aeneid, IV, 175; from a description of rumour). -- F.W.G.
095 "So long as they thought they were winning, they did win" (Livy, II, 64). -- F.W.G.
096 See footnote 38. -- F.W.G.
097 For example, in section 28 and in Thoughts, Secs. 64-66, 167 ff.
098 The text in the latter part of this sentence is obscure; the sim plest emendation is to add "a" before "simple," but this still leaves some difficulty. Fowler, op. cit., and Adamson, op. cit., print the text as it stands; the former suggests that from "simple, unper plexed proposition" to the end of the sentence is either in apposi tion to "part yet unknown" or an independent absolute participial expression; the latter suggests the following emendation: "and, that being understood and fully mastered, to proceed to the next adjoin ing part yet unknown; [to state] what is belonging to the matter in hand as simple, unperplexed proposition [s, and so] tending to clear it, [is] what is principally designed." -- F.W.G.
099 Argument by analogy involves inference from resemblance or similarity: A and B are alike in respect of x and y; A possesses a quality z, therefore B also has it. It is sometimes useful, but often dangerous. The argument in Locke's illustration runs thus: sul phuric acid is found to have a certain effect; nitric and acetic acids, being also acids, may be assumed to have the same effect. But, as Locke says, the argument is valid only if the effect is due wholly to the acidity. -- F.W.G.
100 Chapter xxxiii. -- F.W.G.
101 That is, as a systematic statement of fact. -- F.W.G.
102 Adamson, op. cit., has: "...questioned; such unnatural connections become by custom as natural to the mind as [that] sun and light, fire and warmth go together, and so seem to carry with them...." -- F.W.G.
103 Locke uses this word in a number of distinguishable senses in his writings here it seems to mean "of honourable birth," "upper class." -- F.W.G.
104 That is, the nature of the ideas. -- F.W.G.
105 That is, "precisely." -- F.W.G.
106 Essay, II, ix.
107 See footnote 38. -- F.W.G.
108 That is, "befits."
109 Adamson, op. cit., suggests that the image here is that of wreckers' beacons, which were lit to lure vessels on to the rocks. -- F.W.G.
110 Locke has his own education in mind. He frequently deprecates the logical exercises which were a regular part of university studies. See footnote 32 and Thoughts, Secs. 94, 98, 188-189. -- F.W.G.
111 Locke was a friend of Newton and had a great respect for him. In Thoughts, (Sec. 194) he writes of "the incomparable Mr. Newton," and in the Essay he describes the Principia (published in 1687) as "his never enough to be admired book." -- F.W.G.
112 See footnote 32. -- F.W.G.
113 The Turkish Sultan; but no doubt Locke is thinking of the English monarchy He discusses the question in his Two Treatises of Government. -- F.W.G.
114 That is, "restive," "intractable." -- F.W.G.
115 Section 3. -- F.W.G.
116 The posse comitatus was a force of men whom the sheriff of the county (comitatus) could call on to assist him in keeping order. -- F.W.G.
117 That is, without our understanding. -- F.W.G.
118 That is, "irrelevant," "not pertinent." -- F.W.G.
119 That is, "experienced." -- F.W.G.
120 According to some ancient physicians an extremely rarefied substance, which they called "animal spirits," was produced by the brain and flowed along the nerves to effect the operations of senses and muscles; it also effected the operation of the soul or higher intellectual functions. -- F.W.G.