Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Locke's Theory of Knowledge and Its Historical Relations
Essay upon which I have been engaged for some years, but in View of the proportions to which it has grown it has seemed better that it [should appear independently. Notwithstanding the labours of Campbell Fraser and the admirable little Volume by Professor Alexander, the, Essay still suffers from the twin assumptions, that it fican be understood without being studied and that its full significance can be summed up in a small number of simple propositions. In truth, few philosophical classics lend themselves less readily to such summary treatment than do its carefully guarded statements, and its complex, unstable thought positions. In the exposition of Locke's doctrine, which occupies the first half of this book, I have, accordingly, sought to indicate the grounds of my inter pretation by frequent references and quotations. The relation of Locke's thought to that of his predecessors and contemporaries has hitherto received but little considera tion, and that little not from his countrymen. To throw some further light upon the in?uences which affected his work has, consequently, been one of my chief aims. On the other hand, I have omitted all reference to the move ment which culminated in Hume, to have dealt with which with the necessary fullness would too greatly have extended the length of the present work. Concerning it I can'onlyremark that the exclusive attention bestowed upon it, as the story of the self-refutatlon of certain of Locke's prin ciples, has been largely responsible for the false perspective in which the Essay itself is too commonly viewed. That the tendency to sensationalistic atomism was bound to work itself out is, indeed, true enough. But the significant fact that the course of the individual thought of Locke of Berkeley, and even of Hume himself, favoured the fuller recognition of the intellectual functions 1nvolved ln know ing and of the systematic character of what is known, suggests that there were other directions in which the doctrine of the Essay was susceptible of at least equally legitimate development.
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