Continent of the French Philosophic movement, but its great impulse came
from England. Bacon had much to do with it; Hooker and Hobbes were not
without influence; Newton's discoveries directed men's minds towards
physical science; but of the metaphysical and political ideas of the
century, John Locke was the fountain-head. Some Frenchmen have in modern
times disputed his claims. To refute these disputants it is only
necessary to turn from their books to those of Voltaire and his
contemporaries. The services rendered by France to the human race are so
great that her sons need never claim any glory which does not clearly
belong to them. All through modern history, Frenchmen have stood in the
front rank of civilization. They have stood there side by side with
Englishmen, Italians, and Germans. International jealousy should spare
the leaders of human thought. They belong to the whole European family
of nations. The attempt to set aside Locke, Newton, and Bacon, as guides
of the eighteenth century belongs not to that age but to our own.

The works of Locke are on the shelves of most considerable libraries;
but many men, now that the study of metaphysics is out of fashion, are
appalled at the suggestion that they should read an essay in three
volumes on the human understanding, evidently considering their own
minds less worthy of study than their bodies or their estates. It may be
worth while, therefore, to give a short summary of those theories, or
discoveries of Locke which most modified French thought in the
eighteenth century. The great thinker was born in 1632 and died in 1704.
His principal works were published shortly after the English Revolution
of 1688, but had been long in preparation; and the "Essay on the Human
Understanding" is said to have occupied him not less than twenty years.

It is the principal doctrine of Locke that all ideas are derived from
sensation and reflection. He acknowledges that "it is a received