Note 614 — Chapter VII

This disregard of ancient authority appears so constantly in his works, that it is difficult to choose among innumerable passages which might be quoted. I will select one which strikes me as well expressed, and is certainly very characteristic. In his Free Inquiry into the vulgarly received Notion of Nature, he says (Boyle's Works, vol. iv. p. 359), ‘For I am wont to judge of opinions as of coins: I consider much less, in any one that I am to receive, whose inscription it bears, than what metal it is made of. It is indifferent enough to me whether it was stamped many years or ages since, or came but yesterday from the mint.’ In other places he speaks of the ‘schoolmen’ and ‘gownmen’ with a contempt not much inferior to that expressed by Locke himself.