17 - The Coherence of a Mind 3
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2012
Summary
Considering ‘man bearly as an animal of three or four score years duration and then to end his condition and state requires no other knowledg then what may furnish him with these things which may help him to passe out to the end of that time with ease safety and delight which is all the happynesse he is capeable of…’ Yet, ‘when he hath all that this world can afford’, ‘he is still unsatisfied uneasy and far from happyness’. But, with the probability of the existence of a future state in which the actions of men will be judged by God, a probability which only those with the most corrupt intentions have any good reason to deny, ‘…here comes in another and that the main concernment of mankinde and that is to know what those actions are that he is to doe what those are he is to avoid what the law is he is to live by here and shall be judg'd by hereafter…’. God makes accessible to all men the knowledge which is necessary to improve their physical situation and to instruct them in their duties. ‘I thinke one may safely say that amidst the great ignorance that is soe justly complaind of amongst man kinde, where any one endeavourd to know his duty sincerly with a designe to doe it scarce ever any one miscaried for want of knowledge.’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Political Thought of John LockeAn Historical Account of the Argument of the 'Two Treatises of Government', pp. 229 - 242Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1969