Voltaire, ingeniously defended by Rousseau, magnificently defended by
Victor Hugo in the following verses, well worthy of Leibnitz:

"Oui peut-etre au dela de la sphere des nues,
Au sein de cet azur immobile et dormant,
Peut-etre faites-vous des choses inconnues
Ou la douleur de l'homme entre comme element."



CHAPTER III

THE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY


Locke: His Ideas on Human Liberty, Morality, General
Politics, and Religious Politics.


LOCKE.--Locke, very learned in various sciences--physics, chemistry,
medicine, often associated with politics, receiving enlightenment from
life, from frequent travels, from friendships with interesting and
illustrious men, always studying and reflecting until an advanced old age,
wrote only carefully premeditated works: his _Treatise of Government_
and _Essay on the Human Understanding_.

Locke appears to have written on the understanding only in order to refute
the "innate ideas" of Descartes. For Locke innate ideas have no
existence. The mind before it comes into contact with the external world is
a blank sheet, and there is nothing in the mind which has not first come