Locke, John (1632-1704)

Letter to the Right Reverend Edward Lord Bishop of Worcester, Concerning Some Passages Relating to Mr. Locke's Essay of Human Understanding. In a Late Discourse of his Lordship's, in Vindication of the Trinity

London

1697

"But tho I must always acknowledg to that justly admir'd Gentleman, the great Obligation of my first Deliverance from the unintelligible way of talking of the Philosophy in use in the Schools in his time, yet I am so far from entitling his Writings to any of the Errors or Imperfections which are to be found in my Essay, as deriving their Original from him, that I must own to your Lordship they were spun barely out of my own Thoughts, reflecting as well as I could on my own Mind, and the Ideas I had there, and were not, that I know, deriv'd from any other Original."

By the Quotations in your Lordship's immediately preceding words taken out of my Essay, which relate to that ingenious thinking Author, as well as by what in your following words is said of his founding Certainty in his own Existence; it is hard to avoid thinking that your Lordship means, that I borrow'd from him my Notions concerning Certainty. And your Lordship is so great a Man, and every way so far above my Meanness, that it cannot be suppos'd that your Lordship intended this for any thing but a Commendation of me to the World, as the Scholar of so great a Master. But tho I must always acknowledg to that justly admir'd Gentleman, the great Obligation of my first Deliverance from the unintelligible way of talking of the Philosophy in use in the Schools in his time, yet I am so far from entitling his Writings to any of the Errors or Imperfections which are to be found in my Essay, as deriving their Original from him, that I must own to your Lordship they were spun barely out of my own Thoughts, reflecting as well as I could on my own Mind, and the Ideas I had there, and were not, that I know, deriv'd from any other Original. But, possibly, I all this while assume to my self an Honour which your Lordship did not intend to me by this Intimation; for tho what goes before and after, seems to appropriate those Words to me, yet some part of them brings me under my usual Doubt, which I shall remain under till I know whom these words, viz. This Talk about clear and distinct Ideas being made the Foundation of Certainty, belong to.
(I, pp. 365-6)

Fabric::Spinning

Reading Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, 2 vols. (1962, reprinted Harvard UP, 1983), I, 234.

Text from The Works of John Locke, Esq. 3 vols. (London: John Churchill, 1714). <Link to Google Books>

See also Liberty Fund edition <Link to OLL>.