Contents introduction main Part chapter 1

Philosophy
Locke's Two Treatises were infrequently quoted throughout the late 17th and early 18th centuries. "Except among few Whigs, even as a contribution to the fierce discussion of the 1690s, it had little influence and was widely ignored until 1703 (though it was supposed to have created 'a tremendous noise' in Oxford in 1695)," historian Julian Hoppit remarked of the work. Locke's theories were "mentioned so rarely in the early stages of the Revolution, up to 1692, and even less thereafter, unless it was to heap abuse on them," according to John Kenyon, who also noted that "no one, including most Whigs, ready for the idea of notional or abstract contract of the kind adumbrated by Locke" in his study of British political debate from 1689 to 1720. In contrast, Kenyon adds that Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government were "certainly much more influential than Locke's Two Treatises. In the 50 years after Queen Anne's death in 1714, the Two Treatises were reprinted only once (except in the collected works of Locke). However, with the rise of American resistance to British taxation, the Second Treatise of Government gained a new readership; it was frequently cited in the debates in both America and Britain. The first American printing occurred in 1773 in Boston.
Locke exercised a profound influence on political philosophy, in particular on modern liberalism. Michael Zuckert has argued that Locke launched liberalism by tempering Hobbesian absolutism and clearly separating the realms of Church and State. He had a strong influence on Voltaire, who called him "le sage Locke". His arguments concerning liberty and the social contract later influenced the written works of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers of the United States. In fact, the allusion to a "long train of abuses" from the Second Treatise is quoted precisely in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote because of Locke's influence.
Bacon, Locke, and Newton are just a few of the names that come to mind while thinking They are, without a doubt, the three greatest individuals who have ever lived, and they are credited with laying the foundations for the superstructures that have risen in the physical and moral sciences.
In the field of epistemology, though, Locke's effect may have been considerably greater. Intellectual historians such as Charles Taylor and Jerrold Seigel claim that Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689/90) represents the birth of the modern Western understanding of the self since it redefined subjectivity, or self. The subject matter of modern psychology has been greatly affected by Locke's theory of association. Other philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley, were inspired by Locke's recognition of two types of ideas, simple and complex—and, more importantly, their interaction through association—to revise and expand this theory and apply it to explain how humans gain knowledge in the physical world. Unused property is wasteful and against nature, according to Locke, but with the emergence of "durable" products, persons might trade their extra perishable things for those that would survive longer and thus not violate the natural law. The advent of money, in his opinion, represented the end of this process, allowing for the endless accumulation of property without incurring waste due to deterioration. He also considers gold and silver to be money since they can be "hoarded up without harming anyone," as they do not deteriorate or degrade in the hands of the owner. Money, in his opinion, removes the constraints on accumulation. Locke emphasizes that inequality is the result of an unspoken agreement on the use of money, rather than the social contract that established civil society or the law of land that governs property. Unlimited accumulation poses a dilemma for Locke, but he does not consider it his responsibility. He just suggests that government should have a role in resolving the tension between unrestricted property accumulation and a more nearly equal distribution of wealth; he doesn't specify which principles government should use to do so. However, his thoughts do not all come together in a coherent whole. For example, in the Two Treatises of Government, the labour theory of value is juxtaposed with the demand-and-supply theory of value that he established in a letter titled Some Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising of the Value of Money. Furthermore, while Locke grounds property in labor, he ultimately supports unbounded wealth accumulation.
Locke defines property in two ways: broadly, it relates to a wide variety of human interests and desires, and more specifically, it refers to tangible possessions. He claims that property is a natural right arising from work. Locke argues in Chapter V of his Second Treatise that private ownership of goods and property is justified by the labor put in to produce them—"at least where there is enough [land], and as excellent, left in common for others"—or by the use of property to produce goods beneficial to human society. In his Second Treatise, Locke claims that nature alone contributes little value to society, meaning that the worth of products is determined by the labor put in their construction. Locke established a labour theory of property based on this premise, known as a labor theory of value, in which property ownership is created by the application of labor. Furthermore, he felt that property comes before government and that the government cannot "dispose of the subjects' estates arbitrarily." In his own social theory, Karl Marx criticized Locke's idea of property. Locke was an assiduous book collector and notetaker throughout his life. By his death in 1704, Locke had amassed a library of more than 3,000 books, a significant number in the seventeenth century. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Locke took care to catalogue and preserve his library, and his will made specific provisions for how his library was to be distributed after his death. Locke's will offered Lady Masham the choice of "any four folios, eight quartos and twenty books of less volume, which she shall choose out of the books in my Library." Locke also gave six titles to his “good friend” Anthony Collins, but Locke bequeathed the majority of his collection to his cousin Peter King (later Lord King) and to Lady Masham's son, Francis Cudworth Masham.