Locke

JOHN, (lok,) an English philosopher, B. in Somerset, 1632, received his education at Westminster and Oxford. After filling a diplomatic and other public positions, he became Commi ioner of Appeals in 1688, and D. in 1704. L. was one of the most accomplished and erudite men of his time, and, among his multifarious writings, one work stands preëminent-his well known E ay on the Human Understanding (1690), which marks an epoch in the history of philosophy. In this work, which made its appearance three years after the production of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia, the broad dogma is a erted that the mind does not po e innate ideas, and that all ideas, and, as a corollary, all their various combinations and a ociations, must be referred as to their origin to the faculties of perception and reflection. [s. 551]