LOCKE ON ATHEISM

J.K. Numao1,2

Abstract: Although it is well-known that Locke denied toleration to atheists, rela-tively little has been said in the scholarship about what exactly this denial amountedto. This article attempts to fill this gap by considering, amongst others, Locke’s writ-ings on education and the conduct of the understanding. It first analyses Locke’s defi-nition of atheism. It then shows how in fact Locke distinguished different strands ofatheism and how he thought one becomes an atheist. Finally, the article sketches outLocke’s views about how to deal with these different strands. In offering an extensivediscussion of Locke’s response to atheism, the article portrays both the philosopher’scalmness and his consistency.

Keywords: Locke, toleration, atheism, punishment.

It is well known that in his Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Locke

denied toleration to atheists. He writes: ‘Those are not at all to be tolerated

who deny the Being of a God. Promises, Covenants, and Oaths, which are the

Bonds of Humane Society, can have no hold upon an Atheist. The taking

away of God, tho but even in thought, dissolves all.’3 While some commenta-

tors argue that this denial was less genuine than tactical, most others are

agreed that Locke’s denial is better supposed genuine than spurious.4 Beyond

this point, however, discussions of Locke’s denial by those believing it to be

genuine have tended to be short and dismissive, often criticizing the philoso-

pher’s shortsightedness.5 Opposed to this tendency, there have been illumi-

nating in-depth discussions attempting to explain and to understand why

HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT. Vol. XXXIV. No. 2. Summer 2013

1 Keio University, Japan. Email: lordjohnkay@hotmail.com2 For insightful comments, I am grateful to Dr Jon Parkin, Dr Timothy Stanton, the

two anonymous HPT referees, and also participants of workshops and study groups at theUniversity of York, Keio University, Otago University and Gakushuin University, towhom various parts of the article were presented at various stages of the research andwriting leading up to the present version.

3 J. Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. J.H. Tully (Indianapolis, 1983), p. 51.4 Straussian commentators have traditionally seen Locke’s denial as a strategic

move. See, for example, M.S. Rabieh, ‘The Reasonableness of Locke, or the Question-ableness of Christianity’, The Journal of Politics, 53 (1991), pp. 933–57; P. Josephson,The Great Art of Government: Locke’s Use of Consent (Lawrence, 2002), pp. 257–60.

5 See, for example, M. Cranston, ‘John Locke and the Case for Toleration’, in JohnLocke: A Letter Concerning Toleration in Focus, ed. J. Horton and S. Mendus (London,1991), p. 85; A.J. Simmons, On the Edge of Anarchy (Princeton, 1993), p. 127; J. Rawls,A Theory of Justice (Oxford, rev. edn., 1999), p. 190; A. Tuckness, ‘Rethinking theIntolerant Locke’, American Journal of Political Science, 46 (2002), p. 290; R. Dees,Trust and Toleration (London, 2004), pp. 110–11.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

LOCKE ON ATHEISM 253

Locke was committed to denying toleration to atheists and to see what this

might mean for us today.6

Yet a question that remains under-explored so far in Locke scholarship is

what Locke’s denial amounted to or, in other words, what exactly a denial of

toleration implied for atheists. This is an important question in understanding

how Locke responded to what he saw as a grave, if not the gravest, intellectual

and practical threat to civil society, particularly vis-à-vis his own claims about

the futility of coerced belief. The primary concern of this article is to fill in

this gap. However, as one commentator deplores, ‘[w]e just don’t know . . .

what he [i.e. Locke] thought “not tolerating” atheists entailed, exactly — and

conclusions based upon inference are contestable’.7 One major reason for this

lacuna is due not least to Locke’s own reticence in the Letter. Thus, one recent

approach has been to search beyond the Letter for material which might help

to shed light on this question.8

Following this lead, I dig deeper into the question of Locke’s response to

the problem of atheism by considering, amongst others, Locke’s writings on

education and the conduct of human understanding, thereby adding an impor-

tant footnote to the existing literature. I try to show that Locke’s response dif-

fered in manner according to the cause or nature of one’s atheism or, in other

words, the type of atheist one was. In this context, I draw particular attention

to the crucial role public opinion and shame played in his response. The por-

trait of Locke offered in this article does little, if anything, to change the fact

that Locke barred atheists from the benefits of toleration; but showing that

there was a sophisticated intellectual story behind his denial will help us to

appreciate an aspect of the consistency of Locke’s thought and to reappraise

the almost universal belief that Locke thought very little about the problem of

atheism.9

6 J. Dunn, ‘The Concept of “Trust” in the Politics of John Locke’, in Philosophy inHistory, ed. R. Rorty et al. (Cambridge, 1984), p. 288; J. Dunn, ‘What History Can Show:Jeremy Waldron’s Reading of Locke’s Christian Politics’, The Review of Politics, 67(2005), pp. 448–9; J. Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality (Cambridge, 2002),pp. 217–43.

7 R. Vernon, The Career of Toleration (Montreal and Kingston, 1997), p. 147.8 Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, pp. 231–5.9 What is remarkable is that even John Dunn, who acknowledges the significance of

Locke’s assessment of atheism, remarks that ‘there is no reason to believe that Lockethought very carefully about this question [i.e. the problem of atheism]’. J. Dunn, ‘Whatis Living and What is Dead in the Political Theory of John Locke?’, in InterpretingPolitical Responsibility (Cambridge, 1990), p. 19. Cf. A. Schulman, ‘The Twilight ofProbability: Locke, Bayle, and the Toleration of Atheism’, Journal of Religion, 89(2009), pp. 328–60. Schulman suggests that Locke’s views on atheism in the Lettermight reveal inconsistencies even though he may have thought very hard.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

I

Relatively little has been said in Locke scholarship concerning what Locke

thought we ought to do about atheists, apart from the last chapter of Jeremy

Waldron’s God, Locke, and Equality which considers this problem at some

length.10 Waldron notes that the atheist problem poses ‘something of an

embarrassment’ for Locke’s account, because Locke’s most powerful argu-

ment in the Letter is that force cannot produce authentic belief and that there is

little, if any, point in hypocritical conformity.11 In some places, Locke seems

to suggest that the existence of God is so obvious that it is ‘simply a matter of

forcing people to look and see and consider’, whereas elsewhere he takes a

‘less sanguine view of the problem’, observing that there have been many

serious thinkers in the past who have denied the existence of God. Yet while

this line of inquiry does not offer us anything conclusive, Waldron picks

up another thread from Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding

(1690), namely a suggestion that the law can ‘suppress’ atheism, that is ‘pre-

vent it from being proclaimed and ensure that it doesn’t acquire the sort of

wildfire popularity that might follow if its public avowal did not have to be

furtive’. Toleration for Locke, Waldron argues, is a ‘multifaceted ideal’: one

aspect involves ‘refraining from attempts at forcible imposition of beliefs’

while the other is ‘not prohibiting speech or gatherings or organizations, and

not disqualifying those of minority religions from public life’. It is toleration

in the second sense, Waldron suggests, which Locke seems to have been

denying the atheists.12

Although Waldron’s account offers a useful starting point for an inquiry

into Locke’s response to the atheist problem, I want to draw attention to two

problems in his account and in so doing bring to light other important aspects

of Locke’s response. The first problem comes up in the context of registering

the point that although everyone is at one point ignorant of the existence of

God, many, if not most, people become aware of His existence at a later point

in life. Here, Waldron rather casually comments, ‘[a]fter all, we were all athe-

ists once, says Locke: this is a fault “which we were every one of us guilty

254 J.K. NUMAO

10 Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, pp. 231–5.11 There is a growing literature supposing Locke’s main argument in the Letter to be

based on the irrationality of coerced belief. J. Waldron, ‘Locke, Toleration, and theRationality of Persecution’, in John Locke, ed. Horton and Mendus, pp. 98–124;P. Bou-Habib, ‘Locke, Sincerity and the Rationality of Persecution’, Political Studies,51 (2003), pp. 611–26; M. Schwartzman, ‘The Relevance of Locke’s Religious Argu-ments for Toleration’, Political Theory, 33 (2005), pp. 678–705; R. Pevnick, ‘TheLockean Case for Religious Tolerance: The Social Contract and the Irrationality of Per-secution’, Political Studies, 57 (2009), pp. 846–65; J.W. Tate, ‘Locke, Rationality andPersecution’, Political Studies, 58 (2010), pp. 988–1008. However, cf. T. Stanton,‘Locke and the Politics and Theology of Toleration’, Political Studies, 54 (2006),pp. 84–102.

12 Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, pp. 233–5.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

LOCKE ON ATHEISM 255

of” ’.13 However, there is a problem in calling humanity’s inevitable igno-

rance of God in nonage ‘atheism’ as if to suggest that this was qualitatively

the same as the atheism of an adult who seriously denies the existence of God.

This loose use blinds us to the possibility that there are different strands of

atheism and, if so, also to the possibility that there may be different ways of

dealing with each strand. I shall therefore be arguing that Locke implicitly

distinguishes between these different species of atheists and also that his

treatment amongst them differs.

The second problem arises from Waldron’s omission of references to pub-

lic opinion and shame in his discussion of Locke’s response to atheists. The

omission might be understandable given Waldron’s interest in Locke’s legal

response, that is, what the magistrate may or may not do faced with the prob-

lem of atheism. Yet this focus forecloses both the wider investigation of how

Locke thought we ought to deal with the problem of atheism and the possibil-

ity that the idea of Lockean legal punishment could be multifaceted. In

response to this problem, I shall be arguing that a consideration of the role of

public opinion and shame is crucial to understanding Locke’s response to

atheism and also to the problem of the impracticability of using force as a

means of conversion.

The two problems here relate and unfold in a series of broader questions:

what defined Locke’s atheists? how does an atheist become an atheist? what is

the nature of the different stages of atheism? how should atheists be treated at

different stages of their atheism? My first claim, that there are different levels

of atheists according to Locke, relates particularly to the first three questions.

In what follows, I shall be taking these in turn.

It is a question rarely asked, but what defined Locke’s atheists? Looking

once again at Locke’s statement in the Letter, we see that Locke’s definition

of atheists are those ‘who deny the Being of a God’. Despite its seemingly

uncontroversial nature, the definition is significant in two respects. The first,

which has been noted by Justin Champion, is the definition as denying simply

‘the Being of a God’. Champion notes that the language of atheism in the sev-

enteenth century was used in a ‘very imprecise manner’. An atheist could

refer to someone who did not necessarily deny the existence of God. Used

polemically, an atheist could refer to someone who subscribed to a heterodox

Christian doctrine, such as Socinianism, Arianism and Deism.14 Thus, tell-

ingly ‘defending the authenticity of Scripture was central to all of the major

13 Ibid., p. 234. J. Locke, The Works of John Locke (10 vols., Aalen, 1963), VI, p. 233(henceforth ‘Works’, cited by volume, page number).

14 See, for example, J. Marshall, John Locke, Toleration, and Early EnlightenmentCulture (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 256–63, 694 f.; D. Wootton, ‘New Histories of Athe-ism’, in Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, ed. M. Hunter and D. Woot-ton (Oxford, 1992), pp. 25–6. Locke himself was accused by John Edwards, an Anglicanclergyman of intemperate disposition, of being ‘all over Socinianized’, and so tending

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

acts of legislation against blasphemy between 1648 and 1697’. Given such a

context, Champion argues, Locke’s succinctness can be seen as an attempt ‘to

broaden the category of speculative opinion that could be embraced within

legitimate belief’ by limiting what counted as atheism.15

Does the clause ‘Being of a God’, which seems to suggest a commitment to

monotheism, then mean that polytheism is beyond the pale of toleration? The

existing literature is indeterminate on this point but tends towards the claim

that it does merit toleration in a Lockean polity. Greg Forster, for example,

argues that what is required for toleration is not ‘ “God’s” rewards and pun-

ishments but divine rewards and punishments’ (emphasis added). Polytheism

did not require such a denial and therefore, as Locke’s comments about

pagans in the Letter suggest, toleration extends to polytheists.16 Likewise

Waldron observes that there are passages in the Letters Concerning Tolera-

tion about tolerating ‘pagans’, which seem to suggest that Greek and Roman

polytheism should be tolerated. However, Waldron also notes that we can

infer from Locke’s comments elsewhere that there will always be serious

moral deficiency unless there is an acknowledgement of one invisible God.17

A careful rereading of Locke’s various writings suggests that Waldron’s pro-

viso comes closer to Locke’s own sentiments: polytheism is not to be toler-

ated precisely because it destroys the concept of divineness. First, pace

Waldron and Forster, there is no positive indication that the pagans Locke

refers to are polytheists. As far as the Letter is concerned, Lockean pagans

worship ‘God’, not gods, and so the term ‘pagan theist’ may be more appro-

priate in this context.18 By contrast, as the Essays on the Law of Nature

(1663–4) plainly indicate, in Locke’s mind Greek and Roman polytheists are

256 J.K. NUMAO

towards atheism. See J. Edwards, Some Thoughts Concerning the Several Causes andOccasions of Atheism (London, 1695), p. 113.

15 J. Champion, ‘Le culte privé quand il est rendu dans le secret: Hobbes, Locke et leslimites de la tolérance, l’athéisme et l’hétérodoxie’, in Les fondements philosophiques dela tolérance, ed. Y.C. Zarka, F. Lessay and J. Rogers (3 vols., Paris, 2002), I, pp. 235–7.The translation is based on the English draft available at http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhra/026/TOLERATE.pdf.

16 G. Forster, John Locke’s Politics of Moral Consensus (Cambridge, 2005),pp. 175–6.

17 Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, p. 229.18 Locke, Letter, pp. 43, 54. See I. Harris, ‘Tolérance, église et état chez Locke’, in

Les fondements philosophiques de la tolérance, ed. Zarka, Lessay and Rogers, I, p. 216.That Locke should have referred to a pagan God is not so surprising considering heowned a copy of Gabriel Sagard’s book on the Canadian Hurons. In this book, Sagardreports that the Hurons believed in one creator God, which might help to explain Locke’ssource for a God-worshipping pagan. G. Sagard, Histoire Du Canada (Paris, 1636), ch.30; See also Le Grand Voyage Du Pays Des Hurons (Paris, 1632). J. Harrison andP. Laslett, The Library of John Locke (Oxford, 2nd edn., 1971), nos. 2526 and 2527. ForLocke as a reader of Sagard, see A. Talbot, ‘The Great Ocean of Knowledge’ (Leiden,2010), p. 176.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

LOCKE ON ATHEISM 257

nothing but ‘disguised atheists’ on account of their anthropomorphism and

plurality: ‘to increase the number of gods means to abolish divinity’.19 Like-

wise Locke’s correspondence with Philippus van Limborch indicates that, for

Locke, the concept of deity or divinity implies one and only one God, a Being

who is supreme in terms of attributes that would be better to have than not;

and so, polytheism — the idea that there is a plurality of divines — is concep-

tually impossible.20

There is a further issue about the definition as the denial of the ‘Being of a

God’. The problem with polytheism is that it destroys the notion of the

divineness of the deity by its plural conception of deity and its anthropomor-

phism. But then, what of other so-called wrong notions of God? How else

might one be denying the concept of deity? In the Second Vindication of the

Reasonableness of Christianity (1697), Locke states that ‘he that believes one

eternal, invisible God, his Lord and King, ceases thereby to be an atheist’,

suggesting that eternity and invisibility are two definitive features of the

deity.21 In a similar vein, the Essay suggests that those who believe in an ‘eter-

nal, cogitative, and immaterial Being’ do not do away with the being of a

God.22 Furthermore, there is an interesting manuscript dated 1696 in which

Locke considers Descartes’ proof of a God and most likely Hobbes’s objec-

tions against it. In this manuscript, Locke refers to the Cartesians as ‘Theists’

and Hobbesians as ‘Atheists’, and observes that neither side is objecting

that there is an eternal being, but rather that ‘whether the Eternall being

that made and still keeps all things in that order, beauty and method in

which we see them, be a knowing immateriall Substance or a Sensless

material Substance’.23 Locke is consistent in calling the Hobbesian notion

atheistic because being material the Hobbesian eternal being is not invisible.

As we shall see later, atheism by virtue of having the wrong notion of God

becomes important when trying to understand the stress Locke puts on timely

education as a response to atheism.

Turning now to the second way in which Locke’s definition is significant, I

want to draw attention to the word ‘deny’. For Locke to suggest that one could

deny the existence of God was significant because intellectuals in the seven-

teenth century usually argued that it was impossible genuinely to deny God’s

19 J. Locke, Essays on the Law of Nature, ed. W. von Leyden (Oxford, 2002), no. 5,p. 175.

20 J. Locke, The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E.S. De Beer (8 vols., Oxford,1976–89), VI, L2340, pp. 243–6; L2395, pp. 320–6; L2413, pp. 363–6; L2443, pp.405–6; L2498, pp. 494–7. A partial English translation of these letters is available inJohn Locke: Selected Correspondence, ed. M. Goldie (Oxford, 2002).

21 Works, VII, p. 229.22 J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P.H. Nidditch (Oxford,

1975), IV.xx.18, p. 628.23 See ‘Deus’, MS Locke c.28, fols. 119–20. This is also available at Digital Locke

Project. See, http://www.digitallockeproject.nl/

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

existence, or in other words, to be a ‘speculative atheist’.24 By the impossibil-

ity of speculative atheism, writers often meant it was either conceptually

impossible or simply irrational. In the latter sense, Ralph Cudworth, most

notably, devoted the entire voluminous fourth chapter of his True Intellectual

System to demonstrating that atheism was built upon ‘contradictory’ proposi-

tions.25 Robert Boyle also wrote in Some Considerations Touching the Useful-

nesse of Experimental Naturall Philosophy that the atheists’ ‘paradoxes have

been looked upon as so irrational, that, as soon as they have been proposed,

they have been disdainfully rejected and condemned by all the rest of man-

kind, who have looked upon the patrons of them as monsters, rather than phi-

losophers’.26

On the other hand, one major reason for its purported conceptual impos-

sibility was the belief that the idea of God was innate. For example, Pierre

Nicole (whose work Locke had translated) writes: ‘What pains soever atheists

take to rase out of the minds of men that general apprehension of a deity,

which the very view of the world naturally imprints there, they have not been

able to extirpate, or wholly efface those characters that are stamped so clear,

and are sunk so deep.’27 Likewise, commenting on the text of Psalm 14, ‘The

fool hath said in his heart, there is no God’, Richard Bentley notes in the first

of his Boyle Lectures, ‘The Folly of atheism’, that he did not know ‘any Inter-

preters that will allow it to be spoken of such as flatly deny the being of God’.

Bentley surmises that these interpreters were induced to this conclusion ‘from

the commonly received notion of an Innate Idea of God, imprinted upon every

Soul of Man at their Creation, in Characters that can never be defaced’. Thus,

it followed for these interpreters that

Speculative Atheism doth subsist only in our Speculation: whereas reallyHuman Nature cannot be guilty of the crime: that indeed a few sensual andvoluptuous Persons may for a season eclipse this native Light of the Soul;but can never so wholly smother and extinguish it, but that at some lucidintervals it will recover it self again, and shine forth to the conviction oftheir Confidence.28

Bentley therefore concludes that, on this understanding, there can only be

‘practical atheists’, that is, those who ‘believing his Existence, do yet seclude

258 J.K. NUMAO

24 See generally, D. Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain (London and New York,1988), ch. 1.

25 R. Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), pas-sim.

26 R. Boyle, Some Considerations Touching the Usefulnesse of Experimental NaturallPhilosophy (Oxford, 1663), ‘Essay 5’, p. 101.

27 P. Nicole, Discourses on the being of a God (London, 1712), I.5; J. Marshall, JohnLocke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge, 1994), p. 136.

28 R. Bentley, Eight Boyle Lectures on Atheism (New York, 1976 [1692–3]), p. 4.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

LOCKE ON ATHEISM 259

him from directing the Affairs of the World, from observing and judging the

Actions of Men’.

Intellectuals were keen to stress the impossibility of speculative atheism

because its existence would undermine the ‘naturalness’ of God and, in turn,

of morality and religion.29 To show that belief in God was natural to human

nature, there was a widespread tendency amongst philosophers and theolo-

gians to argue that the idea of God was innate; which, they argued, could be

proved by the universal consent of mankind. Edward Stillingfleet, a strong

proponent of universal consent, argued that one could prove ‘That God hath

imprinted an universal character of himself on the minds of men’ by the fact

that ‘the whole world hath consented in it’. He maintains: ‘we assert this uni-

versal consent of mankind, as to the existence of a Deity, to be a thing so con-

sonant to our natural reason, that as long as there are men in the world it will

continue’.30 The existence of a real, speculative atheist would undermine the

universal consent of mankind concerning the existence of God, thereby

threatening the innateness and naturalness of the idea of God.31

Locke, however, opposed this traditional intellectual framework which

relied on innate ideas. In so doing, he helped to create the conceptual problem

of the speculative atheist.32 Here, we come to the second and third questions

raised above, that of the nature of the different levels of atheism and of how

one becomes an atheist. Because Locke rejected innate ideas, he believed that

people were born without any ideas; famously, the mind was, as it were, a

‘white Paper’.33 Given this premise, people were all born ignorant of the

knowledge of God, a ‘fault’ (i.e. shortcoming), he later noted in the Third Let-

ter for Toleration (1692), ‘that which we were every one of us once guilty

29 H. More, An Antidote against Atheism (London, 1653), p. 19; E. Stillingfleet,Origines Sacrae (London, 1662), p. 366; Cudworth, The True Intellectual System, p. 7,and more generally, ch. 4.

30 Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrae, pp. 384–5.31 Stillingfleet argues rather clumsily that even if speculative atheists did exist, this

would not disprove the universal acceptance of the idea of God: ‘For I demand of thegreatest Atheist, Whether it be sufficient to say, that it is not natural for men to have twolegs, because some have been born with one.’ Stillingfleet, Orgines Sacrae, p. 392. How-ever, if there was universal consent concerning the existence of God, who was he arguingagainst? Besides, wasn’t it question-begging to say that disbelief in God was unnaturalwhen trying to prove that belief in God was natural? These considerations have led DavidBerman to conjecture that there was a ‘repressive tendency’ amongst intellectuals; thatis, in denying that speculative atheists could exist, or even if they did, arguing that theywere brutes, intellectuals were repressing the thought that atheism was a rational beliefthey could endorse, thereby defending the naturalness of a belief in God. Berman, A His-tory of Atheism in Britain, esp. ch. 1.

32 John Marshall also notes the problem of the impossibility of speculative atheismbut fails to see that Locke opened such a possibility by rejecting innate ideas. See Mar-shall, John Locke, Toleration, pp. 694 f.

33 Locke, Essay, II.i.2, p. 104.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

of’.34 Locke believed the people were all capable of eventually arriving at the

knowledge of a God through their natural faculties, but at the same time he

acknowledged that there would be a stage in their lives in which they would

be inevitably without the notion of God. Hereby, he firstly created the pos-

sibility of what I shall term the ‘ignorant atheist’, an atheist who has simply

not yet developed the notion of a God. I distinguish this kind of atheism from

speculative atheism. Although the ignorant atheists no less than the specula-

tive atheists needed to be set on the track of theism, Locke clearly thought that

the former were qualitatively different from the latter, and also less threaten-

ing to religion and civil society. He writes:

It being less dangerous to religion in general to have men ignorant of aDeity, and so without any religion, than to have them acknowledge a su-perior Being, but yet to teach or allow them to neglect or refuse worship-ping him in that way that they believe he requires, to render them acceptableto him: it being a great deal less fault . . . to be ignorant of him, than,acknowledging a God, not to pay him the honour which we think due tohim.35

In contrast to speculative atheism, which is a grave threat to religion and civil

society, ignorant atheism is seen as far less threatening, much less than hypo-

critical worship. Thus it is misleading when Waldron writes, ‘[a]fter all, we

were all atheists once, says Locke’, as if Locke had suggested that the two

kinds of atheism were the same.36

If Locke’s rejection of innate ideas had created the space for ignorant

atheism, it in turn created the possibility of speculative atheism. Although

Locke maintained that people were capable of coming to the knowledge of

God through sense experience and reason, precisely because there was rea-

soning involved there was also scope for error. Agents could reason them-

selves into believing that God did not exist, and because they could reason

themselves into believing so, they could obstinately adhere to their view.37 Of

course, it was possible on earlier accounts to suggest that agents could err and

even deny God’s existence. However, innatists were able to respond by claim-

ing that whatever such agents may have been saying aloud, deep in their

hearts they had the notion of God imprinted and thus could not have been seri-

ously denying the existence of God.38 No longer able to adduce innate ideas,

Locke was faced with the problem of the speculative atheist.

260 J.K. NUMAO

34 Works, VI, p. 233.35 Ibid., emphasis added.36 Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, p. 234.37 Cf. Schulman, ‘The Twilight’, pp. 351–2, and also n.75.38 J. Milner, An Account of Mr Lock’s Religion (London, 1700), p. 8. John Milner,

one of Locke’s early critics, argued against Locke that Locke could not claim that therewere atheists (as he had, resorting to travel literature) unless he ‘could assure us (whichhe cannot) that their Atheistical Discourse is the Language of their Hearts, as it is too

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

LOCKE ON ATHEISM 261

II

We have seen how speculative atheism becomes possible conceptually. I next

want to examine how atheists actually become atheists in Locke’s view, and

to this end I draw attention to two works in particular, both of which have not

received due attention in a discussion about atheism: Some Thoughts Con-

cerning Education (1693), which was written from 1684 for Edward Clarke,

giving recommendations for raising and educating his young son, and Of

the Conduct of the Understanding (1706), which was written from 1697,

intended as a chapter for the Essay.39 The general story that can be extracted

from these works suggests that Locke thought that atheists were simply people

who were intellectually lazy and did not use their natural faculties properly.

1. Of the Conduct of the Understanding

In the Conduct of the Understanding, Locke argued that besides one’s profes-

sional calling, everyone ‘has a concern in a future life which he is bound to

look after’.40 Religion is man’s ‘calling as he is a man in the world’.41 Thus, ‘it

mightily lies upon him to understand and reason right’: he ‘cannot be excused

from understanding the words and framing the general notions relating to

religion right’.42 Locke believed that ‘everyone has enough to get as much

knowledge as is required and expected of him, and he that does not that is in

love with ignorance and is accountable for it’.43 Locke saw no reason for ‘the

meaner sort of people’ to give themselves up to a ‘brutish stupidity’ in their

‘nearest concernment’. He noted that the Huguenot peasantry — whose plight

he reckoned to be much worse than the ‘day-labourers in England’ — demon-

strated splendid competence to learn to understand their religious duties, pos-

sibly surpassing those of a ‘higher condition’ among the English population.44

plainly the Language of their Lips and Lives. For any thing that he knows, their Heartsmay give their Tongues the Lye, and there may be inward Fears and Whispers that thereis a God, at the same time that they most stoutly deny it: or if not at the same time, yetafterward Sickness, or the Approach of Death, may awake the Sense of a Deity, whichthey hop’d they had laid asleep, never to awake; and make the Notions and Characterswhich they had labour’d to obliterate, as legible as ever.’

39 J. Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education, ed. J.W. Yolton and J.S. Yolton(Oxford, 1989) (henceforth ‘STE’, cited by section, page number) and J. Locke, Of theConduct of the Understanding, ed. F.W. Garforth (New York, 1966) (henceforth, ‘CU’,cited by section, page number).

40 CU, 8, p. 55.41 Ibid., 19, p. 71.42 Ibid., 8, p. 55.43 Ibid., 37, p. 109.44 Ibid., 8, p. 55; J. Dunn, ‘Bright Enough for All Our Purposes: John Locke’s Con-

ception of a Civilized Society’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 43 (1989),p. 143.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

The English and Europeans were particularly fortunate, on Locke’s account,

because Christianity was very much a part of their everyday life. The ‘one day

of seven, besides other days of rest’ allows enough time for people to set their

mind on their religious duties, if they ‘would but make use of these vacancies

from their daily labour and apply themselves to an improvement of knowl-

edge with much diligence as they often do to a great many other things that are

useless, and had but those that would enter them according to their several

capacities in a right way to this knowledge’.45 In short, Locke’s point was that

‘any human being who cared enough about the goal and took sufficient trou-

ble could reconstruct themselves to do so’.46

As with the expectation that all should be religious, Locke had the same

expectation for people doing theology, that is, natural theology. Theology, a

science ‘incomparably above the rest’, contains ‘the knowledge of God and

His creatures, our duty to Him and our fellow creatures and a view of our pres-

ent and future state’. It is ‘the comprehension of all other knowledge directed

to its true end, i.e. the honour and veneration of the Creator and the happiness

of mankind. This is that noble study which is every man’s duty and everyone

that can be called a rational creature is capable of.’47 Locke was suggesting

that one who could not gather the minimal knowledge of one’s natural duties

to God was simply not using his faculties properly. ‘We are born to be, if we

please, rational creatures’, Locke says; but ‘it is use and exercise only that

makes us so, and we are indeed so no further than industry and application has

carried us’.48 As Geraint Parry notes, ‘proper use’, for Locke, implies ‘consis-

tency and industry’.49 Thus, the problem with the atheists on Locke’s account

is that they are lazy when it comes to the care of their souls.

Locke identifies three ‘miscarriages’ of which people could be guilty in

relation to the use of their reason.50 First, there are those who hardly reason at

all and follow the paths laid down by others. This was a fault Locke observed

in Catholics.51 Second, there are those who put passion in the place of reason.

This was a fault the enthusiasts made.52 Third, there are those who sincerely

attempt to reason, but are nonetheless misled because they lack a full view of

all that pertains to that which is the subject of inquiry. This partiality to opin-

ions is prejudicial to knowledge and improvement.53 Because ‘everyone in his

private affairs uses some sort of reasoning’, he tends to be denominated as

262 J.K. NUMAO

45 CU, 8, pp. 55–6; see also, Locke, Essay, IV.xx.3, pp. 707–8.46 Dunn, ‘Bright Enough’, p. 143.47 CU, 23, p. 77.48 Ibid., 6, p. 49.49 G. Parry, John Locke (London, 1978), p. 42.50 CU, 3, pp. 34–41.51 Locke, Letter, pp. 49–51; Locke, Essay, IV.xx.10, pp. 712–13.52 Locke, Essay, IV.xix, pp. 697–706.53 CU, 22, pp. 76–7.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

LOCKE ON ATHEISM 263

being ‘reasonable’. However, that ‘one who is found reasonable in one thing

is reasonable in all’ was, for Locke, a false inference. Locke remarks: ‘it is as

true that he who can reason well today about one sort of matters cannot at all

reason today about others, though perhaps a year hence he may. But wherever

a man’s rational faculty fails him and will not serve him to reason, there we

cannot say he is rational, how capable soever he may be by time and exercise

to become so.’54 Impartiality in one’s enquiry was not easy, Locke admits, but

it was ‘the right way to truth’, which people ‘must follow who will deal fairly

with their own understandings and their own souls’.55

The timing of the Conduct of Understanding suggests that it was this third

miscarriage that Locke thought the atheist was guilty of committing. It is

well-known that Locke took particular interest in the case of the Scottish stu-

dent Thomas Aikenhead ‘the Atheist’, who was executed for blasphemy on

8 January 1697.56 Reflections upon this incident may well have prompted

Locke to write the Conduct of the Understanding in early April 1697.57 We

know from his correspondence with James Johnston, Secretary of State for

Scotland from 1691 to 1696, that Locke avidly collected documents and

papers pertaining to this trial.58 His collection included the ‘Paper’, which

gave an account by Aikenhead himself of ‘how he had arrived at his sceptical

opinions’. Importantly, the ‘Paper’ stressed ‘his insatiable inclination to

truth’. Contemporary witnesses also testified that Aikenhead was ‘not vicious,

and extreamly studious’.59 Aikenhead allegedly derived his thoughts by

the reading of ‘some atheistical books’, perhaps provided by his colleague

Mungo Craig. Locke’s comments in the Conduct of Understanding suggest

that he had someone like Aikenhead in mind, who had a strong passion

for truth yet nonetheless reasoned himself into atheism. The Conduct of

54 Ibid., 6, pp. 49–50.55 Ibid., 35, p. 108.56 M. Hunter, ‘Aikenhead the Atheist: The Context and Consequences of Articulate

Irreligion in the Late Seventeenth Century’, in Atheism from the Reformation to theEnlightenment, ed. M. Hunter and D. Wootton (Oxford, 1992). Another marginal case ofheterodoxy in which Locke took an interest was the German Balthasar Bekker, a ministerof the Public Church in Amsterdam, who was accused of undermining the authenticity ofScripture and being an ‘advocate of atheism’ for denying the influence of evil spirits.Locke, Correspondence, IV, L1409, pp. 294–301.

57 Locke, Correspondence, VI, L2243, p. 87 (10 April 1697). ‘I have lately got a littleleisure to think of some additions to my book, against the next edition, and within thesefew days have fallen upon a subject that I know not how far it will lead me. I have writtenseveral pages on it, but the matter, the farther I go, opens the more upon me, and I cannotyet get sight of any end of it. The title of the chapter will be Of the Conduct of the Under-standing, which, if I shall pursue, as far as I imagine it will reach, and as it deserves, will, Iconclude, make the largest chapter of my Essay.’

58 Locke, Correspondence, VI, L2207, pp. 17–19 (27 February 1697). See list ofdocuments on p. 17.

59 Hunter, ‘Aikenhead the Atheist’, p. 230.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

Understanding suggests that Locke would have applauded Aikenhead’s cour-

age to investigate the truth and fight against received opinions and dogma-

tism.60 But he writes: ‘We should contend earnestly for the truth, but we

should first be sure that it is truth, or else we fight against God, who is the God

of truth’; and ‘the reason why some men of study and thought that reason right

and are the lovers of truth do make no great advances in their discoveries’ is

because ‘they converse but with one sort of men’ and ‘they read but one sort

of books’.61 The lack of impartiality was, for Locke, a fault, and a fault which,

as the Aikenhead case showed, could lead to atheism.

2. Some Thoughts Concerning Education

As with the Conduct of the Understanding, Locke’s Some Thoughts Concern-

ing Education equally provides us with important clues to answer the ques-

tion of what the cause of atheism was. For Locke, the mind was something

that needed to be ‘set right’, so that ‘on all Occasions it may be disposed to

consent to nothing, but what may be suitable to the Dignity and Excellency of

a rational Creature’.62 From this claim, we might expect some kind of causal

story of the development of misguided minds, that is, of the atheists. But ‘one

feature of a growth theory that Locke does little to delineate’, as John and Jean

Yolton, the modern editors of Locke’s Some Thoughts, observe, ‘is the acqui-

sition of beliefs’.63 However, a closer examination of his writings on educa-

tion reveals how he thought atheists might have acquired an unfavourable

habit of reasoning.

In Locke’s view, the education children receive from their parents plays a

significant part in the beliefs they acquire and the ways in which they learn to

reason. In the Two Treatises, Locke argues that parents have a duty to take

care of their children during their ‘imperfect state’, and to ‘inform the Mind

and govern the Actions of their yet ignorant Nonage, till Reason shall take its

place’.64 However, after the child reaches the age of reason, he is free and is on

equal status as his father.65 To let the child yield to ‘an unrestrain’d Liberty,

before he has Reason to guide him’ is not to make him free, but contrariwise,

‘to thrust him out amongst Brutes, and abandon him to a state as wretched,

and as much beneath that of a Man, as theirs’.66

It is important to register the point that, for Locke, ‘[t]o guide one’s self by

the law of nature and reason is not merely to live an orderly and virtuous life:

264 J.K. NUMAO

60 CU, 11, pp. 60–1.61 Ibid., 11, p. 61; 3, p. 36.62 STE, 31, p. 103.63 Yolton and Yolton, ‘Introduction’, in STE, p. 39.64 J. Locke, The Two Treatises on Government, ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge, 1988),

II.58, p. 306.65 Ibid., II.59, p. 307.66 Ibid., II.63, p. 309.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

LOCKE ON ATHEISM 265

it is to have the very essence of humanity’.67 God was the author of the law of

nature and reason, and so being a ‘man’ in his terms implied that one acknowl-

edged His existence. Thus, in A Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of

Christianity, Locke asserts: ‘As men, we have God for our King, and are

under the law of reason’; and so ‘he that believes one eternal, invisible God,

his Lord and King, ceases thereby to be an atheist’.68 In this light, we see that

education, that is, teaching how to reason properly, ‘humanizes’ the child.69

Therefore much responsibility lies with parents and educators. How did

Locke suggest they should educate their children?

In Some Thoughts, Locke recommends that the ‘true Notion of God’ — that

is, ‘as of the independent Supreme Being, Author and Maker of all Things,

from whom we receive all our Good, who loves us, and gives us all Things’ —

should be ‘imprinted on’ the child’s mind at an early stage to secure the foun-

dation of virtue.70 He advises parents that on this occasion the child need only

be told that God ‘made and governs all Things, hears and sees every Thing,

and does all manner of Good to those that love and obey Him’.71 He warns that

‘unseasonably’ teaching more may be damaging: the nature of the ‘infinite

Being’ being ‘incomprehensible’, those ‘who have not strength and clearness

of Thought, to distinguish between what they can and what they cannot know,

run themselves into Superstition and Atheism, making God like themselves,

or (because they cannot comprehend any thing else) none at all’.72 The child

must be taught only ‘as far as his Age is capable’.73 Adults, like children, were

also prone to falling into atheism by being taught things above their strength:

as early as 1667, Locke had conjectured that ‘the defineing & undertakeing to

prove severall doctrines which are confesd to be incomprehensible & to be

noe otherwise knowne but by revelation, & requireing men to assent to them

in the termes proposd by the Doctors of your severall churches, must needs

make a great many atheists’.74

67 Yolton and Yolton, ‘Introduction’, p. 25.68 Works, VII, p. 229 (emphasis added).69 Yolton and Yolton, ‘Introduction’, p. 25; see also J.W. Yolton, Locke: An Intro-

duction (Oxford, 1985), p. 37.70 STE, 136, p. 195.71 Ibid.72 Ibid. Similar ideas can be found in the additional chapter ‘Of Association of Ideas’

in the Essay: ‘Let custom from the very Childhood have join’d Figure and Shape to theIdea of God, and what Absurdities will that Mind be liable to about the Deity?’. Locke,Essay, II.xxxiii.17, p. 400.

73 STE, 139, p. 198.74 J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Toleration, ed. J.R. Milton and P. Milton (Oxford,

2006), p. 302.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

As with teaching basic natural theology, Locke advises parents to take cau-

tion with the method of teaching Christianity, lest it leads to irreligion.75 Chil-

dren should learn the Lord’s Prayer, the Creeds and Ten Commandments

‘perfectly by heart’.76 They should also read the Bible (and perhaps only the

Bible until they are ready to read Cicero’s On Duties).77 However, Locke goes

so far as to say that ‘the promiscuous reading of it [sc. the Bible] through, by

Chapters, as they lie in order, is so far from being of any Advantage to Chil-

dren’ for ‘principling their Religion, that perhaps a worse could not be found’.

He speculates that ‘this in some Men has been the very Reason, why they

never had clear and distinct Thoughts of it all their Life-time’.78

To summarize the main claims in the passages we have just been consider-

ing, Locke is suggesting that excessive attempts to reason about God’s nature

(i.e. engaging in complicated natural theology) at a premature stage could

lead to a false notion of God or even atheism itself. Locke intimates that there

are internal and external causes of this excessive reasoning in relation to the

individual. The internal cause was ‘curiosity’. Concerning curiosity, Locke

remarks that it should be ‘as carefully cherished in Children, as other Appe-

tites suppressed’.79 On Locke’s account, therefore, parents have a great

responsibility to inform their children of what they want to know, but not to

give them more than they can take in. Excessive curiosity may be one of many

biases in the child’s natural tempers, which he or she may be unavoidably

born with; and ‘either to take off, or counter-balance’ these natural inclina-

tions was the ‘Business of Education’.80 By contrast, the external cause was

the religious and educational environment in which the child happened to be

placed. Parents, tutors and local priests may overzealously introduce religious

doctrines to a child.

We may infer from the above considerations that on Locke’s account the

inquisitive but ignorant reasoning of a child, aided by untimely teaching

methods, could become the arrogant and stubborn reasoning of an adult.

Because his beliefs were instilled in childhood, and ‘riveted there by long Cus-

tom and Education’, he was inclined to think that these beliefs were innate prin-

ciples. Once this has happened, Locke observes, it was ‘beyond all possibility

of being pull’d out again’.81 Because such a person has absolute faith in his

reasoning, he will abandon the passion for truth and further inquiry, and will

fail to see that his knowledge is partial. At this point, he becomes a stubborn

speculative atheist, one that is truly menacing to civil society. His false

266 J.K. NUMAO

75 STE, 158, p. 213.76 Ibid., 157, p. 212.77 Ibid., 185, p. 239.78 Ibid., 158, p. 213.79 Ibid., 108, p. 167.80 Ibid., 139, p. 198.81 Locke, Essay, IV.xx.9, p. 712.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

LOCKE ON ATHEISM 267

reasoning, his failure to come to the knowledge of God and the law of nature

renders him a ‘madman’ and one who ought never to have been set free from

parental government.82

III

Having now identified different levels of atheists and their causal stories on

Locke’s account, we are in a position to consider Locke’s treatment of athe-

ists. In considering this question, we should distinguish between the ignorant

atheists — that is, atheists by virtue of their unavoidable ignorance in nonage

or by virtue of not yet having seriously contemplated their religious duties —

and the speculative atheists. As we saw above, from what Locke said in the

Third Letter, the ignorant atheist was less damaging to religion and less faulty

than a hypocritical worshipper, and so by implication a speculative atheist.

The Conduct of the Understanding advanced a view consistent with this.

Locke writes: ‘it being of worse consequence to steer one’s thoughts by a

wrong rule than to have none at all, error doing to busy men much more harm

than ignorance to the slow and sluggish’.83 For Locke, it was imperative that

one guided oneself by the right rule, namely the law of nature and reason.

Those transgressing the law of nature declared themselves ‘to live by another

Rule, than that of reason and common Equity, which is that measure God has

set to the actions of Men, for their mutual security’; and thus, a man ‘becomes

dangerous to Mankind’.84 The speculative atheist did just this. The specula-

tive atheist was one who ‘rationally’ reached the wrong conclusion that God

does not exist, and obstinately held fast to this view. This was the atheist as

such and the truly intolerable atheist. As we shall see, Locke differentiated the

ways in which we should treat the ignorant atheist and the speculative atheist.

Here, ‘obstinacy’ is the keyword.

Locke’s response to children and ‘very mean’ people, that is, those who fit

the description of the ignorant atheists, was characterized by its patience. In a

discussion of correcting the child in Some Thoughts, he remarks: ‘Nor is that

hastily to be interpreted obstinacy, or wilfullness, which is the natural product

of age or temper. In such miscarriages they are to be assisted, and helped

towards amendment, as weak people under a natural infirmity; which though

they are warned of, yet every relapse must not be counted a perfect neglect.’85

In the case of the ‘very mean’ people, Locke considerately argues: ‘they

would be found not to want understanding fit to receive the knowledge of reli-

82 Ibid., II.xi.13, II.xxxiii.4; Works, VII, p. 162; Locke, Two Treatises, II.60,pp. 307–8.

83 CU, 13, p. 65.84 Locke, Two Treatises, II.8, p. 272.85 STE, 80, p. 141.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

gion, if they were a little encouraged and helped in it as they should be’.86 Igno-

rant atheists merited a patient response because what they needed

was a learning opportunity; they could be directed towards theism, if done

carefully.

However, Locke’s comments suggest a more impatient response to the

stubborn speculative atheist. These atheists have essentially closed the doors

to theistic learning. Because they were convinced that their own rule was

right, they were of much worse consequence than those who were merely

ignorant of the rule of reason. In the Essay, as Waldron has noted, Locke sug-

gested that it was commendable that the magistrate should suppress atheism:

we should have too much Reason to fear, that many, in more civilizedCountries, have no strong, and clear Impressions of a Deity upon their Minds;and that the Complaints of Atheism, made from the Pulpit, are not withoutReason. And though only some profligate Wretches own it too barefacedlynow; yet, perhaps, we should hear, more than we do, of it, from others, did notthe fear of the Magistrate’s Sword, or the Neighbour’s Censure, tie up Peo-ples Tongues; which, were the Apprehensions of Punishment, or Shametaken away, would openly proclaim their Atheism, as their Lives do.87

This way of dealing with the atheist is strikingly similar to the way he deals

with the obstinate child in Some Thoughts.88 Locke was famously against

whipping as a means of education. But there was ‘one Fault’ for which he

thought it appropriate to whip the child: ‘Obstinacy or Rebellion’. Stubborn-

ness, and an obstinate disobedience ‘must be master’d with Force and Blows:

For there is no other Remedy’.89

However, Locke insisted that the ‘shame of Whipping, and not the Pain,

should be the greatest part of the Punishment’.90 Locke was well aware of peo-

ple’s inclination to seek the approbation of others while shunning that which

might bring shame upon them. Locke’s approval of the use of shame against

atheists is no coincidence. It is at this point that we can see how Waldron’s

deleting of the references to public opinion and ‘shame’ and his exclusive

focus on the magistrate’s sword does a great disservice to our understanding

of Locke.91 If toleration is understood as the removal of force aimed at conver-

sion, a denial of toleration would then allow of its use.92 However, as is well

known, one of Locke’s arguments in the Letter is that force cannot change

268 J.K. NUMAO

86 CU, 8, p. 56.87 Locke, Essay, I.iv.8, p. 88.88 STE, 78–80, pp. 138–42.89 Ibid., 78, pp. 138–9.90 Ibid., 78, p. 138.91 Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, p. 234.92 Works, VI, p. 62.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

LOCKE ON ATHEISM 269

people’s inward persuasion.93 Though Locke later conceded through his

exchange with Jonas Proast that force could have an effect on belief, he still

resolutely believed that it was likely only to produce hypocrisy. This is where

public opinion played a crucial role. The uniqueness of Some Thoughts was

with its use of the agent’s desire for approbation as a means to create virtue

within the agent.94 Although reputation is ‘not the true Principle and Measure

of Vertue’, it is nevertheless that ‘which comes nearest to it’.95 By deploying

shame, Locke tried to motivate the atheists to turn their eyes to their primary

duty as men. The fact that people were moved by esteem was distasteful for

Locke, but he took this disposition to his advantage and used it for his pur-

pose.96 For coercion, in the end, may only make the atheist a hypocrite.97

Unless atheists were genuinely brought out of their misconception, there

remained a grave danger to civil society.98 Locke seems to have taken seri-

ously the idea that ‘A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump’ (Galatians 5:9).

He would have been all the more certain about this when he immersed himself

in the study of Paul’s epistles. In this work, he paraphrases: ‘the influence of

one man enterteind among you may mislead you all’.99 That there were people

who sincerely denied God’s existence ‘tho but even in thought’ was an alarm-

ing situation. The atheist needed either to be corrected or hindered from voic-

ing his opinion in public — more so, if his argument had the appearance of

rationality, or perhaps even more so, if he was a gentleman. For Locke writes:

‘For if those of that Rank [sc. Gentlemen] are by their Education once set

right, they will quickly bring all the rest into Order.’ Surely this logic could

work for the worse.100

This last point about the gentleman’s impact suggests an interesting pos-

sibility, namely that public opinion can have both a positive and a negative

93 Locke, Letter, p. 27.94 I. Harris, The Mind of John Locke (Cambridge, rev. edn., 1998), ch. 9.95 STE, 61, p. 119.96 Harris, The Mind, p. 283.97 A crucial point highlighted in the recantation of Daniel Scargill, a professed atheist

and Hobbist was that ‘recanting Hobbists are intrinsically unreliable’. Recantation ‘wasalways a flawed punishment for a Hobbist, because Hobbes had famously suggested thatunder the order of the civil magistrate it was permissible to give an external professionwithout actually internally subscribing to the view expressed’. J. Parkin, ‘Hobbism in theLater 1660s: Daniel Scargill and Samuel Parker’, Historical Journal, 42 (1999), p. 95.

98 Once oath taking is ‘looked on as Formalities of Law’, or once ‘Custom of strain-ing Truth’ has ‘dipt Men in Perjury, and guilt with Temptation has spread it self verywide, and made it almost fashionable in some Cases, it will be impossible for theSociety . . . to subsist’. J. Locke, Locke on Money, ed. P.H. Kelly (Oxford, 1991), p. 213.

99 J. Locke, A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul, ed. A.W. Wainwright(2 vols., Oxford, 1987), I, p. 151.

100 ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, in STE, pp. 79–81. Cf. D. Wootton, ‘Introduction’, in JohnLocke: Political Writings, ed. D. Wootton (Indianapolis, 2003), p. 109.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

impact as an antidote to atheism. Locke seems to have been aware of this

double-edged aspect of public opinion, and so the importance of harnessing it.

This possibility is suggested in the fact that Locke said little about atheism in

the Letter. A quick survey of seventeenth-century writers on atheism suggests

that Locke’s discussion was unusually short. Henry More’s An Antidote

against Atheism (1653), Charles Wolseley’s The Unreasonableness of

Atheism (1669) and Ralph Cudworth’s The True Intellectual System of the

Universe: wherein all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted and

its impossibility demonstrated (1678) are only a few of the most famous

examples of intellectuals writing against atheism at great length in the latter

half of the seventeenth century.101 Locke’s brevity seems odd given the

importance he clearly attached to the problem of atheism.

This might be explained in connection with the problem of speculative

atheism. We have seen above that Locke’s rejection of innate ideas created

the ignorant atheist and thereby the possibility of the speculative atheist.

Given that the idea of God was not innate, there was a possibility that people

could genuinely reason themselves into atheism. Locke’s own philosophical

commitment showed that speculative atheism was possible, but it would not

have been a problem to which he would want to draw attention. Opening up

the possibility of speculative atheism would cast doubt on the naturalness of

the notion of God and, with it, morality and religion. However, a serious refu-

tation of atheism could have the unintended effect of militating against reli-

gion and theology. If Locke, a gentleman, took up atheism as an opinion

requiring serious refutation, it would give it undue attention and undesirable

respectability as a view that one could rationally and seriously entertain, or at

least something worth reflecting upon.102

This thesis is all the more plausible given the example of Ralph Cudworth.

Cudworth wrote the True Intellectual System wherein he refuted the ‘reason

and philosophy’ of atheism. However, he desisted from publishing the second

part of the True Intellectual System because the first part had ironically

worked to fuel atheistic arguments in extensively discussing it.103 Indeed,

Henry Atherton, possibly with Cudworth in mind, observed that:

those very Arguments which have been made use of to confute one Atheist,have made twenty; for the less curious and examining (which certainly are

270 J.K. NUMAO

101 More, An Antidote, and also, An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness(London, 1660); C. Wolseley, The Unreasonableness of Atheism (London, 1669);Cudworth, The True Intellectual System.

102 Thus, Berman suggests that some intellectuals who did not support the idea ofinnate ideas nevertheless denied that speculative atheism was possible in an attempt torepress and to prevent it from proliferating. Berman, A History of Atheism, p. 34.

103 W. Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated (2 vols., London, 1742),II, pp. x–xii; Berman, A History of Atheism, pp. 62–3; J. Parkin, Taming the Leviathan(Cambridge, 2007), p. 334.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

LOCKE ON ATHEISM 271

far the greater number) seeing learned persons start so many difficulties,and spend so much time and labour in the Argumentative part to convince,do from thence conclude that the thing is at least dubious.104

Thus, Cudworth’s True Intellectual System had ‘earned a less welcome repu-

tation as a book that was a little too effective in describing the arguments of

the atheist’.105 If atheism was out for serious public scrutiny, Locke feared,

given the force of public opinion, it could gain currency. Therefore, atheism

must not be treated seriously.106

IV

This article has concentrated on the problem of what (on Locke’s account) a

denial of toleration implied for atheists. By way of concluding, I want to link

the preceding arguments with an assumption made throughout this paper but

referred to only in passing, so that we can see more clearly why it should have

mattered that Locke did have an effective response to atheism; that is, the

assumption that atheism poses a grave threat to Locke’s way of thinking.

Atheists, in the broad sense, either lack or deny the idea of God. Regardless

of the nature of this absence, it must ultimately be corrected. But what exactly

is it about this absence that was so problematic? Locke’s claim that the taking

away of God ‘dissolves all’ should be taken at face value. Locke explained

humankind’s moral, religious, political duties in terms of natural duties

derived from natural law. Natural law in turn depended on the existence of a

law-maker, God, for ‘there is no law without a law-maker’.107 The Lockean

God, who is omnipotent and omniscient, created humankind and moreover

created it for a purpose; this purpose, befitting its rational nature, included a

duty to worship God and to procure and preserve life in society with other

people.108 These duties are known by all human beings through their natural

faculties of sense and reason. Thus, natural law, which has a law-maker who

has willed certain things to be performed, and which are promulgated to all, is

binding.109 A denial of God then implied a denial of this entire natural order,

and hence all these natural duties. Particularly, ‘Promises, Covenants, and

Oaths’, which were the essential bonds of human society, and which had God

as a guarantor, would have no sanctity. It is not that a society of atheists never

104 H. Atherton, The Christian Physician (London, 1683), p. 4.105 Parkin, Taming the Leviathan, p. 334. Locke possessed a copy of Cudworth’s

True Intellectual System. Harrison and Laslett, The Library of John Locke, p. 119,no. 896. Locke was also familiar with Cudworth’s arguments. R.I. Aaron and J. Gibb,An Early Draft of Locke’s Essay (Oxford, 1936), p. 118. Locke was close to Cudworth’sdaughter, Damaris Cudworth, later to be Lady Masham.

106 Wootton, ‘Introduction’, p. 109.107 Locke, Essays, no. 5, p. 173.108 Ibid., no. 4, p. 157, and no. 7, p. 199; see also, Locke, Two Treatises, II.6, p. 271.109 Locke, Essays, no. 6, p. 187.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion

did nor could ever exist; it is rather that such a society would not have any-

thing to guarantee its bonds beyond the self-interest of the individuals.110 And

that did not guarantee much.111 Without God, a normative natural order was

inconceivable. Godlessness was both an intellectual and a practical problem,

rendering atheism a ‘crime’.112

While the lack of the idea of God is inexcusable, we have seen that a lack

due to ignorance was less threatening in Locke’s mind than an outright denial.

Ignorant atheists are, as it were, ‘first-time’ or ‘slow’ learners and can be seen

as being open to theistic learning. Thus, it was suggested that those involved

in their education be patient, and gradually train them in the skills of impartial

and broad inquiry, as education could be both the remedy and the problem of

fostering the notion of God. By contrast, speculative atheists are those who

have effectively put a stop to the learning process; they have concluded that

there is no God. Though this speculative denial in itself would ‘dissolve all’,

that some were outspoken in their view had the added evil of spreading their

practical doctrine, especially if they were of respectable social rank. Thus, it

was suggested that speculative atheists be treated as an obstinate child, but the

force of the punishment imposed on them stressed the shame, as opposed to

the pain, behind it, which would operate as a motive to restart the learning

process. However, public opinion could also work against Locke’s cause.

Ironically, an extensive refutation of atheism might suggest that it was a view

that could be taken seriously. This possibility helps us to see Locke’s brevity

about atheism as his response to it, a negative response that involved remain-

ing silent about the specifics of atheism.

It would perhaps not be so surprising if one should meet what one per-

ceived as a profound threat to one’s most cherished value with a certain

degree of hysteria. Yet Locke’s response to what he saw as the gravest chal-

lenge to human society — atheism — involved making careful distinctions

and calm assessments of the relevant threats. Perhaps one may disagree with

what he saw as the problem, but we can nevertheless appreciate how he

responded to it.

J.K. Numao KEIO UNIVERSITY

272 J.K. NUMAO

110 Ibid., no. 5, pp. 173, 175; Locke, Essay, I.iv.8, pp. 87–8; MS Locke c.28, fol. 141,also reprinted in J. Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge, 1969), p. 1.

111 Locke, Essay, I.iii.13, p. 75.112 Works, VII, p. 162.

Cop

yrig

ht (

c) Im

prin

t Aca

dem

ic 2

013

For

per

sona

l use

onl

y --

not

for

repr

oduc

tion