If, however, we regard
less the topics on which these two illustrious men wrote, than the
special service rendered by each of them to intellectual progress, we
may not unfittingly compare the work of Locke--the descent from
metaphysics to psychology--to the noble purpose of redeeming logic
from the superstition of the Aristotelians, and exalting it to
something higher than a mere verbal exercise for school-boys. The
attack that Locke opened with such tremendous effect on the _a priori_
school of philosophy was never more ably supported than by the "Logic"
and controversial writings of Mr. Mill.
The remarkable fact in regard to both these great thinkers--these
conquerors in the realms of abstract speculation--is their relation to
politics. Locke was the political philosopher of the Revolution of
1688; Mr. Mill has been the political philosopher of the democracy of
the nineteenth century. The vast space that lies between their
treatises represents a difference, not in the men, but in the times.
Locke found opposed to the common weal an odious theory of arbitrary
and absolute power. It is interesting to remember what were the giants
necessary to be slain in those days.
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