Few great thinkers have so little perceived the psychological foundations of politics.

What he did was rather to fasten upon the great institutional necessity of his time--the provision of channels of assent--and emphasize its importance to the exclusion of all other factors.

The problem is in fact more complex; and the solution he indicated became so natural a part of the political fabric that the value of his emphasis upon its import was largely forgotten when men again took up the study of foundations.
John Locke was born at Wrington in Somerset on the 29th of August, 1632.
His father was clerk to the county justices and acted as a captain in a cavalry regiment during the Civil War.

Though he suffered heavy losses, he was able to give his son as good an education as the time afforded.
Westminster under Dr.Busby may not have been the gentlest of academies, but at least it provided Locke with an admirable training in the classics.

He himself, indeed, in the _Thoughts on Education_ doubted the value of such exercises; nor does he seem to have conceived any affection for Oxford whither he proceeded in 1652 as a junior student of Christ Church.