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A m er i c a ’s
P h i lo s o p h e r
A m er i c a ’s
P h i lo s o p h e r
John Locke in American Intellectual Life
C l a i r e Ry d el l A rc en a s
31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 1 2 3 4 5
Preface 1
Epilogue 163
Acknowledgments 167
List of Abbreviations 171
Notes 173
Bibliography 227
Index 251
Preface
seemed a bit murkier—the part that spanned the long nineteenth century,
between the founding era and the twentieth-century publication of so many
articles and books, like Hartz’s, that set Locke at the heart of this political
tradition.
As soon as I started asking questions about Locke’s legacy in Amer-
ica, however, I discovered something unexpected. The Locke I knew and
thought I would find in the historical record was missing. He was nowhere to
be found. And the text I thought defined Locke’s relevance—his Two Trea
tises—was conspicuously absent as well. Between 1773 and 1917, it wasn’t
even published in an American edition.2
John Locke himself, however, was far from absent. Indeed, he seemed
to be everywhere I looked, though in unfamiliar guises and in unexpected
places. While nineteenth-century American presses did not publish his Two
Treatises, they churned out editions of his (much better known, as I discov-
ered) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690).3 The Essay’s influ-
ence at colleges was so pervasive that one Massachusetts-based observer
declared it “undoubtedly the best known of all his works.”4 Indeed, familiar-
ity with the Essay was so widespread that, in San Francisco, the editors of
the Daily Evening Bulletin could reward their readers for making it through
the Saturday news with a good Locke joke: “Can a curl over the forehead be
called, ‘Locke on the Understanding’?”5
Nineteenth-century men and women also knew Locke as a moral au-
thority who promoted generosity, temperance, and effective communica-
tion; as a religious writer, whose A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of
St. Paul (1705–7) provided the best “method of studying the scriptures”;
and as the developer of a popular approach to taking notes on one’s read-
ing.6 They admired his preference for good conversation over the fleeting
pleasures of a card game and applauded his (perceived) distaste for alcohol.
And, in the pages of popular histories, they encountered him as the author
of the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (1669)—“an American law-
giver,” as George Bancroft put it, whose disastrous attempt at real-world
legislation could be held up as an example of the fact that abstract political
theories often failed when put into practice, no matter how virtuous or wise
their creators.7
Moving backward in time, I discovered that Locke was everywhere in
eighteenth-century America too. He appeared in diaries, newspapers, personal
letters, and magazines as an immediate, pervasive, and essential presence. He
taught both men and women how to raise children, cultivate friendships, rise
above controversy, retain knowledge, form neighborhood associations, and
Preface 3
English philosopher, but rather a book about how Americans over time
have understood and made sense of him, his work, his ideas, and his rel-
evance.11 I present interpretations of Locke’s life, ideas, and works through
the eyes of my subjects—not the lenses of modern scholars. What we know
or think about Locke is not always what earlier Americans knew or thought
about him. Nor is it how they would have conceptualized “Locke” in the
abstract. For example, observers before roughly 1960 knew—or, rather,
thought they knew—that Locke wrote his Two Treatises to justify the so-
called Glorious Revolution of 1688 and thus frequently labeled him an apol-
ogist for the revolution. Today, we know that Locke wrote his Two Treatises
in the late 1670s or early 1680s, not in response to the events of 1688.12 It is
tempting to say that we are “right” and earlier Americans were “wrong,” but
doing so would lead to another misunderstanding—the projection of our
present back onto their past. When it comes to Locke, humility seems sen-
sible. Even today, Locke’s authorship of and involvement in the creation of
another document, the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, is debated.13
And we still do not have complete or “objective” knowledge about his life,
writings, and thoughts. New writings by Locke are still being unearthed.
Thanks to the discovery and publication in 2019 of a new text weighing the
merits of extending toleration to Catholics, for example, we know a great
deal more today about Locke’s intellectual development vis-à-vis the ques-
tion of religious toleration than we did only a few years ago.14
While this is not a book about Locke the man, it will be helpful to know
a bit about him.15 Born in 1632 in Somerset, England, Locke lived during
some of the most tumultuous and transformative times in English history.
His seventy-two years encompassed the English Civil War (1642–51), the
Glorious Revolution (1688–89), and the rapid growth of English coloniza-
tion in North America. He bore witness—and contributed—to transforma-
tions in science, medicine, and metaphysics. By the end of his life, Isaac
Newton’s Principia (1687) and its account of terrestrial gravity had replaced
the Aristotelian scholasticism that had dominated European centers of
learning for centuries. Locke was, as one historian has put it, “a child of the
Reformation and a progenitor of the Enlightenment.”16
Locke was a well-educated man, known for his quick mind and sharp wit.
He studied, and later taught, at Christ Church, Oxford, where he found him-
self drawn to René Descartes and the natural philosophy of Robert Boyle
rather than the classical and scriptural texts that formed the foundation of the
scholastic tradition.17 A medical doctor by training, Locke in 1667 became
the personal physician, secretary, and confidant of Lord Ashley, later the Earl
6 P R E FA C E
of Shaftesbury. A year later, in 1668, Locke was elected a fellow of the Royal
Society. Twice in exile (once in France from 1675 to 1679 and once in Hol-
land from 1683 to 1689), Locke was no stranger to church censorship and
absolute monarchy. The author of hundreds of essays, tracts, and letters, he
wrote to oppose political tyranny and religious persecution, and to free the
mind, body, and soul from the shackles of mysticism and skepticism. At the
same time, he condoned slavery, denied women full inclusion in civil society,
and, ultimately, excluded atheists and Catholics from his calls for toleration.18
Although popular with several female friends, including Lady Masham
(née Damaris Cudworth), Locke never married. Nor did he have children.
Accounts of his close friendships and love for rousing conversation and good
company have fascinated Locke’s biographers across the centuries; so too
have his many personal travails, including his lifelong struggle with asthma.
Preface 7
But it was just beginning. Locke’s writings would soon be well known
throughout the North American colonies. Indeed, several—especially his
Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Some Thoughts Concerning
Education—would become some of the most important books in early Amer-
ica.7 What is more, eighteenth-century men and women would come to
celebrate Locke, follow his example, and invoke his authority in ways quite
unimaginable to us today. The following chapter explains how and why this
came to be.
: : :
Who was Locke to early Americans? One answer is that Locke meant differ-
ent things to different people—that engagement with Locke was multifac-
eted and diverse.8 Locke had something to say about practically everything,
and early Americans listened. Indeed, they used Locke and his writings to
think about issues relating to education, knowledge acquisition, religion,
money, civil government, childrearing, community improvement, old age,
and friendship—to name just a few. Consequently, it would be possible to
write many different histories of Locke’s influence during this period. One
can imagine, for example, histories of Locke’s influence on currency de-
bates in Massachusetts in the 1730s, politics in Maryland in the 1740s, or
education in Pennsylvania in the 1750s.9
But focusing on the diversity of Americans’ engagement with Locke
obscures a more important truth—that the ultimate source of Locke’s au-
thority in all of the aforementioned areas was the same: namely, his status
as the author of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, his reputation
as a man of good character, and his crucial role as a guide, model, and moral
exemplar—an immediate and pervasive presence in people’s daily lives, who
taught them how to rear children, study scripture, and pursue a variety of
other activities related to improving both themselves and their communities.
: : :
In the early 1740s, South Carolinian Eliza Lucas was a tenacious, deter-
mined young woman. Tasked with managing her family’s expansive Wap-
poo Plantation and its enslaved residents when she was not yet seventeen
years old, Eliza quickly became an expert in cultivating both rice and, after
much experimentation, indigo. Afforded the luxury of a home library, she
woke up before five o’clock most mornings to read and study, a habit that
served her well. When she died in 1793, Eliza was remembered for her “un-
derstanding” and “uncommon strength of memory.”10
10 Chap ter One
These observations should not surprise us. Eliza, after all, knew her
Locke. In 1741, her friend, and eventual husband, Charles Pinckney, recom-
mended that she read An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Charles’s
suggestion proved timely. With Locke’s Essay in hand, Eliza embarked
on a period of dogged self-reflection. After a particularly fun-filled visit
to nearby Charleston—“the Metropolis . . . a neat pretty place,” as she de-
scribed it—Eliza found herself down in spirits, a change in mood she attrib-
uted to “that giddy gayety and want of reflection wch I contracted when in
town.” In search of answers that might explain and improve her sorry state
of mind, Eliza observed, “I was forced to consult Mr. Lock over and over to
see wherein personal Identity consisted and if I was the very same self.”11
From book 2, chapter 27, section 19 of the Essay, Eliza gleaned that “per
sonal Identity consists, not in the Identity of Substance” but rather “in the
Identity of consciousness.”12 Consulting Locke on this matter made her confi-
dent of his relevance for further self-improvement. “In truth,” she explained
to a correspondent, “I understand enough of him to be quite charmed.” “I
rec[k]on,” she continued, “it will take me five months reading before I have
done with him.”13
Charles and Eliza’s shared engagement with Locke’s Essay in the early
1740s is, in many respects, unremarkable. The Essay was, far and away,
Locke’s most popular and influential work in early America.14 And as Eliza’s
experience reveals, it made a deep impression on its readers. From the Es
say, they learned that people were born without innate ideas and that they
acquired knowledge about themselves and the world around them from
a combination of sensation and reflection. They learned of the humbling
difficulties associated with putting their ideas into words—that is, of the
shortcomings of language for conveying meaning. And they learned, to use
Locke’s own words, that people “are fitted for moral Knowledge, and natu
ral Improvements” and that “Morality is the proper Science, and Business of
Mankind.”15
However many months she spent with the Essay, Eliza’s devotion to
Locke was only just beginning. Sometime around 1742, she read the sec-
ond part of Samuel Richardson’s popular epistolary novel Pamela, or Vir
tue Rewarded, which endorsed—explicitly, in over a hundred pages of
references—Locke’s approach to pedagogy and childrearing.16 When she
first read Pamela, Eliza was unmarried with no children of her own, so it
is not surprising that aspects of Pamela’s apparent vanity made more of an
impression than the novel’s retelling of Locke’s emphasis on, for example,
the importance of teaching young children self-sufficiency. Before long,
Locke’s Legacy in Early America 11
: : :
Not two years after John Locke died in Essex, England, Benjamin Franklin
was born in Boston, Massachusetts. A self-described “bookish” boy, Frank-
lin first encountered Locke in the 1720s, when he read the Essay as a teenage
apprentice to his older brother, the Boston printer James Franklin.23 Per-
haps James had brought Locke’s Essay back with him from London, where
he had been working, or perhaps young Ben himself found it on the shelves
of a Boston bookseller.24
Locke’s Essay had an immediate and profound influence on Franklin.25
It formed the basis of his resolution, at age twenty, to reform his life accord-
ing to a plan “for regulating my future Conduct in Life,” which included
12 Chap ter One
Mr. ——, age 52, married, a clergyman: his mother died of apoplexy;
two of his four brothers are insane. He had the usual illnesses of
childhood in mild form, diphtheria of the worst type in 1869, and in
recent years, according to his belief, malaria, as he had lived in a
malarial region eleven years. As a young man he was of robust
frame and vigorous health, brought up on a farm. He overworked,
denied himself, and overtaxed, in getting his education, a brain not
trained from early years to exacting labor. Eight years ago, for the
first time, and at intervals since then, he has had attacks of mental
confusion, dimness in sight, and indistinct articulation lasting from a
few moments to several minutes. Three years ago, after great
emotional strain, people began to notice that his preaching had lost
in animation and force, and they complained that he had suddenly
become more radical in his views. Great mental worries occurred
soon after. There had been no alcoholic or other excess, except of
mental overwork, and there could be no reasonable possibility of
syphilis, unless we adopt Hebra's dogma, “Jeder Mensch kann
syphilitisch sein”—that the means of innocently acquiring that
disease are so widespread that no one can be said to be free from
the danger of it. Nearly two years ago, in the dark, while feeling tired
mentally and physically, but not ill or dizzy, in alighting from a coach
he missed the step and came to the ground on his feet with great
force. He walked to the house of a friend, and was found by one of
the family on their entry floor groaning, but not unconscious. He
could not stand or talk, vomited incessantly, and complained of a
horrible pain in the back and top of his head. Two days later, and
each succeeding Sunday, he preached, obstinately and unlike him
refusing to listen to advice to keep quiet; but he remained in bed
between Sundays for three weeks, when the striking symptoms
disappeared; but he had never felt entirely well since then—never
had the same animation. He was supplying various pulpits, and
found, wherever he had preached before, that people complained
that there was a general lack of vigor in his preaching. Two years
ago he observed that his right leg had less life in it than was natural,
and soon after that both legs seemed heavy—that it was less easy to
run up and down stairs, which his wife also noticed several months
later. He also has had for a year a strange feeling, a sort of
numbness, in his legs. He thought that his handwriting and speech
have continued as good as ever, but has observed that he has had
to change to a stub pen, as he found difficulty in writing with the old
sharper-pointed kind; that his voice had grown less clear; and that he
has rapidly become farsighted. He has never had any dizziness,
pain, ache, or uncomfortable feeling about his head, except during
the attacks already referred to. There have been no thoracic or
abdominal symptoms, no neuralgia or rheumatism. Appetite and
digestion have been faultless. He has lost about ten pounds in flesh.
He has slept soundly, but is often restless, getting in and out of bed.
He says that he was depressed for lack of employment; that he is
not irritable, but that his family would say that he is not as tractable
as he was, not as patient, less easily satisfied; that his son and wife
would say that he is not what he once was—that his memory is not
as clear and vivid as it was. He is conscious that within the last two
years he has had violent, uncontrollable passionate outbreaks from
trivial causes. He preaches his old sermons, because he thinks they
are too good to be lost, and because he takes pleasure in rewriting
them, in doing which he remarks that the handwriting becomes
progressively worse toward the end of each sermon. He says that he
can write still better sermons, but does not like to make the effort.
When he went into the pulpit a week ago he was told not to
announce a second service, but everybody seemed to him so
pleased with his preaching that a week later he gave word that there
would be an evening service, to which, he laughingly said, only one
person came. In standing with his eyes closed and feet together
there was a little unsteadiness. On attempting to turn around or to
stand on one foot with eyes closed there was some, not very great,
ataxia. In these trials the unsteadiness and ataxia soon became very
striking on prolonging the muscular effort a few moments. His hands
had a powerful grasp, each marking 74 with the dynamometer, and
on being stretched to their full extent, with fingers spread,
immediately thereafter the fibrillary tremor could be seen only on
close examination. There was no marked tremor of the muscles of
the lips or face, except in movements which placed them at extreme
tension. The tongue was quite tremulous on being protruded to its
full length and held there. In walking in a rather dark entry the steps
seemed to me shortened and the feet wider apart than in his natural
gait, and he did not raise his feet as much, which he noticed also. In
going up stairs he placed the whole foot, heel and all, on each step
to keep his balance. He turned very deliberately, keeping the feet
near together and not raised from the landing. On coming down he
evidently steadied himself by a muscular effort extending to his head
and shoulders. The knee-jerk was well marked and alike in both
legs, but I could not say that it was exaggerated. There had been no
change in the sexual function.
FIG. 15.
I purposely made no remark to the patient, and he made no inquiry,
about diagnosis or treatment. He would have missed his train,
although there was a clock in my office, had I not reminded him of
the late hour, whereupon he made all his arrangements with care,
good judgment, and accuracy, and reached his home safely. As he
walked briskly down the even sidewalk I doubt whether any one,
even a physician, would have remarked any unsteadiness or
anything abnormal about his gait. If he had been followed a few
blocks, until the idea of catching his train had ceased to stimulate
him, and after he had reached the crowded thoroughfares of the city,
especially as he stepped up and down curbstones or walked slowly
to avoid teams at crossings, a close examination would undoubtedly
have shown the defects in gait already pointed out.
Mr. ——'s wife had noticed that her husband did not raise his feet as
of old in walking—that he walked as if they were heavy, but under
the influence of coca wine or a decided mental stimulus he walked
apparently as well as ever for a short distance. She had noticed a
slight impairment in memory, an increased fractiousness, a
diminished ability to appreciate things in their proper light, a
changeability in his moods and mental state, a scarcely-observed
but noticeable neglect or oversight of little customary duties,
occasional passionate outbreaks from trifling causes, a disposition to
laugh and cry easily; and that often he did and said unwonted foolish
little things, like attributing increased flow of urine to his liver, wearing
two starched shirts, announcing the Sunday evening service; but she
had not considered any of the symptoms as evidence of disease,
especially as he kept accounts, attended to his preaching, etc., and
showed no manifest indications of a disturbed or impaired mind. She
had remarked a decided change in the character of his handwriting,
also an unusual deliberateness in speech, but no indistinctness or
hesitation, although his voice had become less clear. He had had no
delusions, illusions, hallucinations, or unreasonable ideas. It was for
the weakness in his legs that she asked my advice.
I found that the mental and cerebral symptoms in this case had been
overlooked, and that the weakness in the legs had been attributed to
spinal concussion, for which a favorable prognosis had been given.
I examined the patient after he had been away from home nine days,
preaching two Sundays, and making many new acquaintances in the
mean while, besides having travelled nearly two hundred miles by
rail, so that he was fatigued. After three weeks' complete rest I saw
him at his house. The knee-jerk was increased as compared with the
previous examination. Otherwise the symptoms had so ameliorated
that some of them could be brought out only after a long and patient
examination, and the rest had to be accepted as a matter of history
of the case. I had his photograph taken, and by comparing it with
another taken three years previously his family noticed what was
quite obvious in that light, but what had thus far been overlooked—
namely, that the facial muscles had lost very much in expression.
The writer of No. 6 was more advanced in general paralysis, but had
been thought not to be ataxic, from the fact that he had been able to
write a single word pretty well. His few lines are quite characteristic
of a general paralytic. Although he was in my office in Boston, he
dated his statement from his home, and wrote the word Lawrence
not badly for a man not in the habit of writing much. Seeing me for
the first time, he addressed me as Friend Folsom, and he signed his
name by his old army title of nearly twenty years before—corporal.
It very rarely happens that the onset and early progress of general
paralysis are so sudden and rapid that there is no prodromal period
or that it is very short.
The patient may recall many long-past events fairly well when he
cannot find his way to the dinner-table without blundering, when he
does not know morning from afternoon, and after he is unable to
dress and undress himself without constant remindings or even
actual help. Such paralytics wander off and die of exposure, are
picked up by the police as having lost their way or as not knowing
where their home is, or fall into some fatal danger from which they
have not mind enough to extricate themselves. When the mental
impairment has reached this point the lack of mind shows itself in a
lack of facial expression, which is so characteristic of the disease
that with a practised eye it is recognized as far as the countenance
can be distinctly seen; and from this point the progress is commonly
quite rapid to absolute dementia, entire inability to form or express
thoughts, too little intellect to even attend to the daily natural wants,
and a descent to the lowest possible plane of vegetative life, and
then death.
The ataxia first shows itself in the finer muscles—of the eye, of the
fingers, of articulation. There is a little hesitancy or rather
deliberateness of speech, the voice loses its fine quality, the
intonation may be slightly nasal. Instead of contracting smoothly and
evenly as in health, the muscles show a hardly noticeable jerkiness;
an irregular fibrillary tremor is seen when they are exerted to their
utmost and held in a state of extreme tension for several moments.
In attempts to steady the handwriting the patient forms his letters
slowly, makes them larger than usual, or tries to hurry over the
letters, making them smaller. The coarser muscles show ataxic
symptoms much later. It is observed by the patient or his friends that
he does not walk off with his usual rapid gait, and the effort to co-
ordinate his muscles produces an early or unusual fatigue, which
may be associated with general muscular pain. Extreme soreness
and pain, following the course of some one or more of the main
nerve-trunks, may be most persistent and obstinate to treatment,
lasting for several years, limiting the motion of the limb, sometimes
beginning a year or two before other symptoms are observed.
Sooner or later, especially after a little weariness or excitement,
there are observed at times, not constantly, indistinctness or an
occasional trip in enunciating linguals and labials, a tremor in the
handwriting, a slight unsteadiness in the gait. When the tongue is
protruded as far as possible, when the hands and arms are stretched
out, when the muscles of facial expression are exerted, in standing
with feet together with closed eyes, a decided muscular tremor and
unsteadiness are remarked. These muscular symptoms soon
become constant, although they may be so slight as to be well
marked only by some unusual test, such as prolonged use after
excitement or fatigue, and the ataxia may diminish, the gait, speech,
or handwriting may improve, while muscular power is growing
progressively less.
In walking the feet are not raised as usual, the steps are shorter, the
legs are kept wider apart; turning about is accomplished in a very
deliberate way, such as to suggest an insecure feeling; movements
like dancing are impossible. Going up and down stairs is difficult; the
whole foot is rested carefully on each step, and the head and
shoulders are held stiffly, so as to maintain the balance. The
muscular movements are generally uneven and tremulous, and yet
the strength may not be so very much impaired, although perhaps
available only for short periods at a time. Even these symptoms may
so improve by a few days' quiet, or even by a night's rest, as to quite
throw the physician off his guard unless a thorough examination is
made. The patient, too, on an even floor or sidewalk may walk so as
not to attract attention, and yet in a new place, over a rough surface,
or in the attempt to perform difficult or rapid movements, exhibit
striking ataxia and feebleness of gait. In starting off with a definite
purpose he may for a short distance walk quite well, as he may do
under the influence of a glass of wine.
In all stages of the disease, especially the later, there may be almost
any of the symptoms observed which occur in the various functional
and organic diseases of the nervous system. The hyperæsthesia,
local or general, may be most absolute, or the anæsthesia so
complete that acts of self-mutilation ordinarily causing exquisite pain
are performed without apparent suffering. Any motor ganglia, any
nerve, any tissue, may degenerate, giving rise to various degrees of
impairment up to total destruction of function—of the optic nerve,
causing blindness; of the auditory, deafness; of the olfactory, glosso-
pharyngeal, or any of the cranial or spinal nerves.
Sugar has in a few cases been found in the urine; albumen is not
uncommon.