Note 444 — Chapter XV

Second Vindication. Works, ii. 656.

Since this volume was sent to the press, I have been reading the interesting Letters, Lectures, and Reviews of Dean Mansell. From p. 306 to 316, he dwells on the tendency of Locke’s philosophy in the direction of theological scepticism, though at the same time he does justice to Locke’s character, and remarks that “when challenged on account of the relation of his premises to Toland’s conclusions, he expressly repudiated the connection, and declared his own sincere belief in those mysteries of the Christian faith which Toland had assailed.” The Dean maintains that in Locke’s philosophy “there is no room for a distinction between the inconceivable or mysterious, and the absurd and contradictory;” and he further goes on to say, after quoting a passage from Sanderson’s Works, i. 233, that “Sanderson’s distinction between the τὸ ὅτι, that it is, and the τὸ πῶς, how it is, indicates the exact point which Locke overlooked and which Toland denied.” He also remarks that Locke wrote his great work without reference to theology, and probably without any distinct thought of its theological bearings. But the Dean takes no notice of the passages quoted in the text from Locke’s Essay on the Understanding, in which he distinctly notices the theological bearings of his speculation, and makes a distinction between the inconceivable and absurd, in other words, what is above reason and contrary to it; and virtually recognizes the truth of what Sanderson says about the τὸ ὅτι and the τὸ πῶς, the fact of existence and the mode.