ABSTRACT
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) and John Locke (1632-1704) crossed one another's paths on a number of occasions. Both were concerned, for instance, in the foundation of the Board of Trade and the scheme for recoinage around 1695. The individuals consulted by the government on this occasion, indeed, form a set of the most representative Augustan men ever assembled in one body. Contemporaries valued almost everything in his thought, but they admired above all the clarity of his world-view. The symmetry of the universe, working by intelligible laws, appeared to most people strong proof of a conscious design by a beneficent creator: and thus Newton, by explaining all, was vindicating all. Locke begins with the famous rejection of so-called innate ideas. In practice what this meant was that people acquire notions through experience. Locke contributed in more direct ways to aesthetic thinking. It was he who developed the distinction between wit and judgement.
