Indeed Locke appears to owe his popularity and influence as a popular writer mainly to his being one of the first to express, in a plain and unhesitating manner, opinions which had for some time been ripening in the minds of a large portion of the cultivated public. Hobbes had already promulgated the main doctrines which Locke afterwards urged, on the subject of the origin and nature of our knowledge: but in him these doctrines were combined with offensive opinions on points of morals, government, and religion, so that their access to general favour was impeded: and it was to Locke that they were indebted for the extensive influence which they soon after obtained. Locke owed this authority mainly to the intellectual circumstances of the time. Although a writer of great merit, he by no means possesses such metaphysical acuteness or such philosophical largeness of view, or such a charm of writing, as must necessarily give him the high place he has held in the literature of Europe. But he came at a period when the reign of Ideas was tottering to its fall. All the most active and ambitious spirits had gone over to the new opinions, and were prepared to follow the fortunes of the Philosophy of Experiment, then in the most prosperous and brilliant condition, and full of still brighter promise. There were, indeed, a few learned and thoughtful men who still remained faithful to the empire of Ideas; partly, it may be, from a too fond attachment to ancient systems; but partly, also, because they knew that there were subjects of vast importance, in which experience did not form the whole foundation of our knowledge. They knew, too, that many of the plausible tenets of the new philosophy were revivals of fallacies which had been discussed and refuted in ancient times. But the advocates of mere experience came on with a vast store of weighty truth among their artillery, and with the energy which the advance usually bestows. The ideal system of philosophy could, for the present, make no effectual resistance; Locke, by putting himself at the head of the assault, became the hero of his day: and his name has been used as the watchword of those who adhere to the philosophy of the senses up to our own times.