A Collection of Several Pieces

Stray papers gathered sixteen years after Locke's death, among them a colonial constitution that sanctioned slavery.

English, the original language, and your language

First published: 1720(published posthumously)
Original language: English

Overview

On 1 March 1669 the eight Lords Proprietors of Carolina, the English grandees who owned the colony, adopted a constitution for it. Locke was their secretary, then in the household of Anthony Ashley Cooper, the future first Earl of Shaftesbury, and a draft survives in his handwriting. The "Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina" set up a hereditary nobility with invented titles, bound a class of tenants called leet-men to the land from father to son, and gave every free settler absolute power over the African slaves he owned. The same document let any seven people who professed belief in God form a church of their own. The colonists' assembly never fully ratified it, and the proprietors amended it five times. It was printed among Locke's writings in 1720, when Pierre Des Maizeaux, a Huguenot journalist in London, published a volume of pieces that the collected works had missed, drawing on manuscripts kept by Locke's friend Anthony Collins and others. The other papers in that volume show Locke at smaller tasks. He replies to John Norris, a clergyman who had criticised the Essay. He outlines natural science for a beginner and advises a gentleman on what to read. He also sets down the rules of a weekly discussion club, which admitted only those who would declare that no one should be harmed for his opinions or his way of worship; Benjamin Franklin drew on a club of this kind for the one he founded in 1727. The Carolina text has drawn the most attention, because the Two Treatises argue that no one is born subject to another. How much of it is Locke's own thinking is disputed. Some historians treat him as a co-author; others see a paid secretary writing down what his employers wanted, as a lawyer drafts a client's will.

Key concepts

How is society ranked in the Carolina constitution?

By land. The eight proprietors hold the largest estates and the highest offices. Under them come two orders of hereditary nobles, the landgraves and the cassiques, each with estates that cannot be sold off piecemeal. Then come freemen who own land, and at the bottom the leet-men, who may not leave their lord’s estate without his written permission, and the slaves.

What makes a church under the Carolina constitution?

Three things. Its members must hold that there is a God, that he is to be publicly worshipped, and that everyone must bear witness to truth when lawfully called on. Any seven persons who agree on that much and give their church a name are recognised. A man who acknowledges no God may not be a freeman of Carolina or hold land there.

How do the Elements of Natural Philosophy define matter?

Matter is an extended solid substance, which makes up particular bodies wherever it is bounded by a surface. Locke adds that it is indifferent to motion or rest: a body stays as it is until something moves or stops it. On this plain definition he builds a beginner’s account of the planets, the air and the senses, and explains bodies by the shape and motion of their smallest parts.

What is the difference between intuitive and demonstrative knowledge?

Intuitive knowledge is seeing at once that two ideas agree or differ: red is not green, the whole is bigger than a part. Demonstrative knowledge needs a go-between. Locke’s example in the Elements is two windows that cannot be laid side by side; their difference in breadth is found by applying the same measure to each. A proof is a chain of such steps.

What does Locke mean by “perspicuity”?

Perspicuity is clearness in speaking and writing. It consists, Locke tells the gentleman reader, in using the proper terms for the ideas one wants to pass from one’s own mind into another’s. He thinks it is learned from examples more than from rules, and recommends the sermons of Archbishop Tillotson as a model. What is said obscurely, he remarks, is lost as soon as it is spoken.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

A Constitution for Carolina

What kind of society does a constitution build when its drafters fear, in their own words, a numerous democracy? The Carolina text answers with ranks fixed by land and birth, and with a freedom of worship wider than England allowed.

The Fundamental Constitutions tie power to land. Eight proprietors sit at the top, a hereditary nobility of landgraves and cassiques beneath them, and below these the leet-men, tenants bound to a lord’s estate whose children are leet-men to all generations. Every freeman is given absolute power over his negro slaves. Beside this stand clauses of another temper: any seven persons agreeing in a religion may form a church, nobody may revile another’s worship, and Jews and heathens are to be won by persuasion. Lawyers may not plead for money, and commentaries on the constitution are forbidden. How the parts were meant to fit, the document does not say.

political institutions
property
aristocracy
hereditary succession
constitutionalism
political representation
legal procedure
religious toleration

Enter a dialogue

Nature, Books and Honest Argument

What should a person who is no scholar know about the world, read, and expect of a conversation? The shorter pieces answer in the Essay’s spirit: a little, well understood, and argued without heat.

The Elements of Natural Philosophy gives a beginner the solar system, the air, the senses and gravitation, described as a settled law by which all bodies tend towards one another. The thoughts on reading tell a gentleman that study exists to improve the understanding and to help him speak clearly, and name the books that serve his calling. The Remarks on Norris ask what use the eye’s delicate structure would be if God supplied every idea directly. And the Rules of a Society admit only those who will harm nobody for his opinions and who seek truth for its own sake.

natural philosophy
astronomy
gravitation
reading
education
language
truth
knowledge
perception
occasionalism
optics

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 93
distinct concepts: 229
by passages held, corpus-wide: #513

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “perception” and “sensation”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 7 concepts, joined by 10 pairings. 58 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
perception	sensation	6
ideas	perception	4
ideas	knowledge	3
occasionalism	perception	3
knowledge	perception	2
occasionalism	sensation	2
education	knowledge	1
ideas	occasionalism	1
ideas	sensation	1
natural philosophy	perception	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1689 A Letter Concerning Toleration (Epistola de Tolerantia)
The one statement of his case for religious freedom that Locke made briefly and to a friend. Everything else he printed on the subject defends this text against one of its critics, Jonas Proast.
EN
1689 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The book Locke's reputation rests on, and the one major work of 1689 that he signed. His quarrel with Bishop Stillingfleet, the unfinished Conduct of the Understanding and the letters to William Molyneux all grow out of it.
EN
1689 Two Treatises of Government
Two parts of a longer manuscript whose middle was lost before printing, as Locke's preface says. The book is his political theory, and it shares a year and a purpose with A Letter Concerning Toleration: each sets a limit on what a ruler may do.
EN
1690 Further Letters Concerning Toleration
A sequel in three parts to A Letter Concerning Toleration: Locke's second and third letters and the fragment of a fourth, each a reply to the Oxford chaplain Jonas Proast. The third is where he tests his case hardest.
EN
1693 Some Thoughts Concerning Education
Written for the household of his friend Edward Clarke and enlarged by Locke through several editions. It is his book of practical advice on raising a child, and it applies the Essay's view that the mind is formed by what it meets.
EN
1695 The Reasonableness of Christianity
His main work on religion, and the opening of the study of Scripture that occupied his last years. He defended it twice against John Edwards, a Cambridge Calvinist, and kept his name off all three books while he lived.
EN
1696 Several Papers Relating to Money, Interest and Trade
Advice written for ministers and for Parliament during the currency crisis of the 1690s, and gathered under Locke's name in 1696. The account of money behind it is sketched in the chapter on property in the Two Treatises.
EN
1697 Letters to the Bishop of Worcester
Locke's own commentary on the Essay, written under attack: three replies to Edward Stillingfleet, issued as separate pamphlets between 1697 and 1699, with a short answer to a second critic, Thomas Burnet, Master of the Charterhouse.
EN
1706 Of the Conduct of the Understanding
An unfinished draft, printed from Locke's papers two years after his death. It is the practical companion to the Essay and overlaps with his advice on education.
EN
1706 Posthumous Works
From the volume of unpublished papers that Locke's executors issued in 1706: a critique of Malebranche from the 1690s and a short discourse on miracles from 1702. Both extend arguments begun in the Essay.
EN
1708 Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and Several of His Friends
Letters to the Molyneux brothers of Dublin — Locke's side of the correspondence — taken from a volume his publishers issued in 1708. It is the closest view of him at work on the later editions of the Essay.
EN
1720 A Collection of Several Pieces you are here EN

— or open another of their works