Note 113 — XIII. LOCKE. (1632-1704).
Reading edition
Compare Carlyle:—“Except thine own eye have got to see it, except thine own soul have victoriously struggled to clear vision and belief of it, what is the thing seen or the thing believed by another or by never so many others? Alas, it is not thine, though thou look on it, brag about it, and bully and fight about it till thou die, striving to persuade thyself and all men how much it is thine! Not it is thine, but only a windy echo and tradition of it bedded [an echo bedded?] in hypocrisy, ending sure enough in tragical futility is thine.” Froude’s Thos. Carlyle, ij, 10. Similarly Locke wrote to Bolde in 1699:—“To be learned in the lump by other men’s thoughts, and to be right by saying after others is much the easier and quieter way; but how a rational man that should enquire and know for himself can content himself with a faith or religion taken upon trust, or with such a servile submission of his understanding as to admit all and nothing else but what fashion makes passable among men, is to me astonishing.” Quoted by Fowler, Locke, p. 118.