The founder of the realistic course and the father of modern Empiricism and Materialism, is _John Locke_, an Englishman. _Thomas Hobbes_ (1588-1679) was his predecessor and countryman, whose name we need here only mention, as it has no importance except for the history of natural rights.
John Locke was born at Wrington, 1632. His student years he devoted to philosophy and prominently to medicine, though his weak health prevented him from practising as a physician. Few cares of business interrupted his leisure, and he devoted his time mostly to literary pursuits. His friendly relations with Lord Anthony Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, exerted a weighty influence upon his course in life. At the house of this distinguished statesman and author he always found the most cordial reception, and an intercourse with the most important men of England. In the year 1670 he sketched for a number of friends the first plan of his famous _Essay on the Human Understanding_, though the completed work did not appear till 1689. Locke died aged 72 in the year 1704. His writings are characterized by clearness and precision, openness and determinateness. More acute than profound in his philosophizing, he does not in this respect belie the characteristic of his nation. The fundamental thoughts and results of his philosophy have now become common property, especially among the English, though it should not therefore be forgotten that he is the first who has scientifically established them, and is, on this account, entitled to a true place in the history of philosophy, even though his principle was wanting in an inner capacity for development.
Locke’s Philosophy (_i. e._ his theory of knowledge, for his whole philosophizing expends itself in investigating the faculty of knowing) rests upon two thoughts, to which he never ceases to revert: first (negatively), there are no innate ideas; second (positively), all our knowledge arises from experience.