Debauchery in Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Part One: Historical Context

A quick glance at any eighteenth-century British literature anthology deems the era a particularly libidinous one. Gender relations are the focus of much of the time period's most popular works; male and female writers alike documented their sexual preferences and expectations and presented them in a forum much more public than ever before. In 1665, Londoners suffered the effects of a devastating plague, and in 1666, their city was decimated by the Great Fire. Consequently, following the spread of disease and aftermath of the fire, there was no pure drinking water to be found, therefore alcohol became the primary beverage of consumption. An increase in alcohol consumption, coupled with a lack of prophylactics, lead to an unprecedented population increase during the eighteenth century. Arthur J. Weitzman, author of the essay “Eighteenth-Century London: Urban Paradise or Fallen City,” claims that “after the plague and fire in the 1660s, the city doubled in population by 1800” (473).

However, the post-disastrous state of London was not the only contributing factor to an increase in sexual activity. According to Karen Harvey, author of “The Century of Sex? Gender, Bodies, and Sexuality in the Long Eighteenth Century,” historical examinations of sex and the body “focus on the period 1650-1850, with heavy emphasis on the eighteenth century … the century of change in the ways in which bodies were understood, sexuality constructed, and sexual activity carried out” (900). This “century of sex” was precipitated by the Enlightenment, which promoted scientific and historical thinking over the former belief in magic and spirituality. “British Society in the Eighteenth Century” writer Robert Allan Houston says that the “witch craze of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had almost died out by 1700, partly as a result of a greater understanding of nature” (453). With this “greater understanding of nature” came a greater understanding of the human body, and in turn, of human sexuality. Harvey calls this new understanding “a prodigious hedonistic liberation of the libido” (899). New medical information and discoveries about sex and the body could also be disseminated widely now thanks to an increase in print media. Individuals were becoming increasingly enlightened about their own bodies, and subjective sexual desires became characteristics of the myriad of developing sexual identities.

Prior to the Enlightenment, men and women were believed to possess the same sexual organs; the female vagina was pictured as “an interior penis, the labia as foreskin, the uterus as scrotum, and the ovaries as testicles” (Harvey 901). Therefore, women were viewed as little more than defective men. New medical information during the Enlightenment debunked this Aristotelian theory, proving that there are distinct physical differences between male and female genitalia. Most importantly, it was discovered that the female orgasm is dispensable to conception. Prior to the Enlightenment, “women had been perceived as lascivious and lustful creatures,” but “by the middle of the the eighteenth century they were increasingly reimagined as belonging to another order of being: loving but without sexual needs” (Harvey 903). At this time, men became considered the more libidinous sex, and as this shift occurred, along with it came what author Faramerz Dabhoiwala calls a “growing acceptance … of libertine assumptions about male sexual conduct” (213). In other words, men discovered the natural implications behind their sexual desires, thereby justifying their libertinism and debauchery.

Randolph Trumbach's essay “Sex, Gender, and Sexual Identity in Modern Culture: Male Sodomy and Female Prostitution in Enlightenment London” is a precise examination of the sexual identities developed during the eighteenth century. He explains that during the Enlightenment, the contemporary “gender role for men presumed that most men desired women exclusively and that all masculine behavior flowed from such desire” (187). This was a reversal of former sexual mores in which the most masculine men had sexual relations with both women and adolescent males. The new two-sex theory indicated that men were created to have sexual relations with women only. This new sexual identity gave women undeniable power that they never previously possessed. Fearing women's demand for equality, men were now tasked with inventing a new sexual hierarchy to maintain their position as the dominant sex.

The debauchery that is prevalent in much eighteenth-century literature can be attributed to the contemporary reevaluation of sex and the development of the concept of gender. Having previously suppressed female sexuality through religious doctrine and medical assumptions, eighteenth-century men developed the concepts of masculinity and femininity in order to stress their sexual superiority. This redefinition justified the libidinous actions of eighteenth-century men while condemning unchaste women. According to Dabhoiwala, the development of gendered characteristics “was clearly to validate the sexual immorality of men … as 'natural' or 'uncontrollable,' whilst simultaneously increasing the social pressures on women to guard their chastity” (213). Femininity became synonymous with victimization just as masculinity became synonymous with sexual irresponsibility. Harvey claims that the shift is a result of “men's need to find a more secure basis and future for patriarchy … by replacing its ancient scriptural and medical basis with a new secular ideology of gender” (910). While the recognition of gender may have been a ploy to prioritize mens' sexual needs, the abundance of racy literature produced throughout the period exhibits the emergence of multiple sexual identities, “where before there was only one” (Harvey 908).

Part Two: New Sexual Identities

The development of the concept of gender did far more than simply justify the lewd behavior of men. It produced many different sexual identities which became the focus of much of the era's literature. While libertines like John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester, wrote in defense of their lasciviousness, intelligent, honorable women like Mary Astell wrote of the hardships women face when subjected to marriage with a man. Other highly intelligible women like Aphra Behn refused to ignore their sexual desires, writing racy literature to inspire other women to listen to their bodies. Men who had, prior to the eighteenth century, engaged in sexual activity with young boys were now referred to as sodomites, and were ostracized for their desires. Similarly, there was no place in the new sexual hierarchy for lesbians or hermaphrodites, but Restoration literature does not marginalize these identities. Despite the male attempt to, through gendered characteristics, prove their sex dominant, they instead created a system where sexual desire is entirely subjective to the individual. The outcome is a variety of sexual characters such as the libertine, the virgin, the passive wife, the prostitute, the sodomite, the lesbian, and the hermaphrodite. The next part of my analysis will focus on the most highly sexualized of these characters: the libertine, the prostitute, the sodomite and the hermaphrodite. I refrain from discussing the sexual activity (or lack thereof) of the virgin, the passive wife, and the lesbian, because the sexuality of these characters was considered of so little importance. Women like Astell wrote about the frustration of being dominated sexually by men, but I am more interested in those characters who could not repress their sexual urges at a time when medical information validated their desires.

The Libertine

John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester, was the very definition of a libertine. A favored rake of King Charles II, he wrote about his sexual exploits with unrestrained pride. In his poem, “Against Constancy,” he promotes the debauchery for which the eighteenth century is so well-known. “Tell me no more of constancy / The frivolous pretense,” he writes (1-2). Wilmot denounces the traditional view that men and women should be loyal to one another. He recommends that “duller fools” with a kinder heart should “be kind to one alone,” and that he, who “in love excel[s] / Long[s] to be often tried” (5-16). Wilmot suggests that men with sexual desire as strong as his should have the right to bed as many women as they choose. Indeed, he closes the poem with a promise: “As each kind night returns: / I'll change a mistress till I'm dead” (18-19).

Dabhoiwala suggests that the development of libertinism “created a powerful polar opposite to the Christian ideal: one in which sexual debauchery was actually to enhance male reputation” (205). Where men were previously permitted to have sex with adolescent boys in addition to their wives, the Enlightenment sex model indicated that men should be with women alone, therefore they had to give up their male companions to instead seek extramarital sex from women other than their wives. Trumbach elaborates: “It was, after all, quietly accepted by legal authority … that some men were likely to need a sexual outlet that for whatever reason was not available to them in marriage. The constables therefore ceased to arrest men found with prostitutes in bawdy houses or in the streets” (195). While public opinion generally denounced women for working as prostitutes, it never indicated that men should be punished for going to them. Many aristocrats at the time were thought to have taken a wife just to hide their sexual preference for boys. Therefore, often times, men would go to prostitutes simply to prove that they were not effeminate sodomites (Trumbach 202).

The Prostitute

The only women capable of expressing sexual passion during the eighteenth century were “prostitutes, seduced servants, remarrying widows, and adulterous wives” (Harvey 207). Prostitutes took advantage of the sexual vivacity of libertines, making a career out of their biggest asset – their sexual gifts. Daniel Defoe's 1724 novel Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress depicts a woman who, deserted by her husband and left to fend for herself and her five children, turns to prostitution for survival. She begins the career of a mistress, moving from one man to the next while she collects an abundance of wealth. While her actions are questionable, she fails to allow men to immobilize her: “I thought a Woman was a free Agent, as well as a Man, and was born free, and cou'd she manage herself suitably, might enjoy that Liberty to as much Purpose as the Men do” (Defoe 147). Defoe's novel depicts prostitution as a threat to domesticity and the free market, a domain previously dominated by men. Once women are awarded their own sexual identity, it becomes difficult to marginalize them, especially when they can use their sexual skills to harvest capital from sexually-motivated men.

As in Roxana, prostitution in the eighteenth century was simultaneously denounced and supported. “The act of whoredom,” according to Dabhoiwala, was a sin, but “all sins could be redeemed” (207). Many women turned to prostitution despite their religion, knowing that they were selling their virtue out of necessity, and that God would forgive them for their sins. Also, once a woman's chastity was ruined, so was her reputation. However, if “she could be placed in a different and improved environment … by the disciplines of work and religion she would be able to rejoin the domestic life” (Trumbach 196). Indeed, the prostitute contradicted all preconceived notions about the natural domesticity of women. However, she gave men an escape from the demands of marital intimacy, as well as a means to prove they were not sodomites. Reiterating the recommendation of Thomas Aquinas, many eighteenth-century physicians tolerated prostitution to avoid acts of sodomy (Trumbach 195).

The Sodomite

Men who enjoyed the company of other men did not disappear with the advent of the Enlightenment's sex model. Instead, men continued to privately engage in sex acts with other men. Often, these acts originated from a desire for camaraderie and companionship that women did not provide. Women's demands that a sexual debt be paid unto them left many impotent men frustrated with their marital relationships. Wilmot writes of this frustration in his poem, “The Disabled Debauchee.” The first half of the poem depicts a battle scene: man and woman, “Two rival fleets,” engage in sexual combat, climbing “to the top of an adjacent hill,” each determined to reach orgasm first (3-4). However, the subject of the poem cannot clear his mind long enough to please his woman: “absent yet,” he “enjoys the bloody day” (12). Wilmot's poem then shifts to his intentions for when his “days of impotence approach,” and he is “driven from the pleasing billows of debauch” (13-15). He testifies to relate his battle tales to whatever “youth (worth being drunk) prove[s] nice” (25). His goal is to seduce young men with his lewd and raucous stories: “With tales like these I will such heat inspire / As to important mischief shall incline” (41-42). Trumbach explains that, while sodomites were considered lesser men in eighteenth-century society, they were “tolerated for their amusing tongues” (188). Wilmot, a self-professed libertine and sodomite, became a favorite of the royal court precisely because he could relate such lascivious tales.

The Hermaphrodite

Aphra Behn challenged the masculine literature of the eighteenth century, offering bold feminine responses that demanded sexual equality for women. One such response is found in her poem, “To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman.” This surprising poem documents one woman's relationship with a hermaphrodite, a female with an enlarged clitoris, resembling a penis. The work could be read as a satire on the sodomite's desire for young boys, as Behn paints the subject of this poem as a “lovely charming youth” whom she, “without blushes,” pursues (4-7). It can also be read simply as an account of yet another sexual character, one created “In pity to [the female] sex / That [they] might love, and yet be innocent” (12-13). Clarinda, the hermaphrodite in this poem, appears in the form of a woman, and thus understands the sexual desires of another female. She has a mock-penis, which offers stimulation, but no ejaculate, which prevents the risk of pregnancy, an indicator of the “crime” Behn speaks of (14).

Trumbach explains that the hermaphrodite was particularly threatening to the male-dominated sexual hierarchy: “Only two kinds of sexual acts endangered an individual's gender standing: sexual passivity in an adult male (but not in an adolescent) and sexual activity by a woman that included the use of an artificial penis or a supposedly enlarged clitoris. Such individuals, along with biological hermaphrodites, were likely to be viewed as dangerous, since they passed back and forth from active to passive rather than remaining in the passive female or active male conditions to which they had been assigned at birth” (192). Behn's portrayal of this sexual character indicates that the advent of gender is not enough to keep a woman in her place. Women, by taking charge of their sexuality, can find other ways to please themselves, even if that means engaging in sex with a third, more non-traditional gender.

Conclusion

The Enlightenment provided individuals with more sexual knowledge than they'd ever previously possessed. An increase in publishing and the dissemination of printed materials allowed this information to reach men and women alike, so that they might begin to explore their own sexual identities. Fearing a demand for sexual equality from women, eighteenth-century men attempted to set themselves higher on the sexual hierarchy by creating the notions of gender, insisting that the masculine was superior to the feminine. While this shift did help to subjugate many women, leaving them helpless to the debauchery of their male counterparts, it also created and affirmed multiple sexual identities. Men and women alike wrote about their sexual discoveries, either to justify their actions or to argue for sexual equality. Eighteenth-century literature reflects a contemporary sexual revolution that extends to the modern age.


Works Cited
Behn, Aphra. “To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch & Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 2135.

Defoe, Daniel. Roxana. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print.

Dabhoiwala, Faramerz. “The Construction of Honour, Reputation and Status in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6 (1996): 201-213. JSTOR. Web. 24 Feb. 2010.

Harvey, Karen. “The Century of Sex? Gender, Bodies, and Sexuality in the Long Eighteenth Century.” The Historical Journal 45.4 (2002): 899-916. JSTOR. Web. 24 Feb. 2010.

Houston, Robert Allan. “British Society in the Eighteenth Century.” The Journal of British Studies 25.4 (1986): 436-466. JSTOR. Web. 26 Feb. 2010.

Trumbach, Randolph. “Sex, Gender, and Sexual Identity in Modern Culture: Male Sodomy and Female Prostitution in Enlightenment London.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 2.2 Special Issue, Part 1: The State, Society, and the Regulation of Sexuality in Modern Europe (1991): 186-203. JSTOR. Web. 24 Feb. 2010.

Weitzman, Arthur J. “Eighteenth-Century London: Urban Paradise or Fallen City?” Journal of the History of Ideas 36.3 (1975): 469-480. JSTOR. Web. 26 Feb. 2010.

Wilmot, John. “Against Constancy.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch & Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 2203-2204.

Wilmot, John. “The Disabled Debauchee.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch & Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 2204-2205.

Perceptions of Beauty in Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Much eighteenth-century British literature depicts the cultural significance of “beauty” and woman's dedication to striving towards it. A beautiful woman is said to “look divine” or be “divinely beautiful”; these words indicate beauty's relationship to God. Contrastingly, we say that an unkempt woman is “ugly as sin” or “looks like hell”; this language equates ugly with evil. Thus, beauty and ugliness are not only physical but also moral opposites. For decades, women have pursued physical beauty as a means of conveying their own inner beauty. During the eighteenth century, when the filth of living conditions made it nearly unbearable to attain a pure, clean sort of beauty, women's attempts to make themselves up became the butt of many men's jokes. The more a woman attempted to make up her face, the greater the disparity between her true nature and true beauty became. Female Restoration writers suggest that men pressured women into striving towards beauty, and that a capitalistic society required them to decorate themselves to excess. Male writers poke fun at women's beautification efforts and, forgetting men are at fault for requiring women to be beautiful, label them vain and self-obsessed. This criticism of beauty is not necessarily misogynistic in nature, but rather a critique of all males who think that women's beauty is “divine” or heavenly. By placing women on such a glowing pedestal, they create their own confusion when they learn that women share the same physical defects (primarily bodily fluids – perspiration, mucus, excrement, etc.) as men.

In “The Turkish Embassy Letters,” Lady Mary Wortley Montagu describes her interaction with another culture's portrayal of beauty. She is comforted by the immodesty of the nude Turkish women in the bath, and says, “if 'twas the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly observed” (2545). Montagu admits there is too much focus on the beauty of the face within her own society. She finds the foreign approach to beauty much more comforting, and desires to stay at the bath longer. It is her husband who commands she leave early. Before she goes, she shows them her “stays,” or corset: “ … they believed I was so locked up in that machine that it was not in my own power to open it, which contrivance they attributed to my husband” (2546). Even the Turkish women attributed the painful application of a corset to the white man's desire to mold his wife's natural form into a more aesthetically-pleasing one. In her letter “To Lady Mar,” Montagu claims that, indeed, Turkish women “have more liberty” than English women possess (2547).

Alexander Pope and Johnathan Swift both wrote about the charade of women's beauty, and their works are generally misconstrued as misogynistic in tone. Pope's “The Rape of the Lock” makes a fool of a woman who prides herself on her beauty and is utterly destroyed when a man steals a lock of her virgin curls. The entire event is satirized; Pope paints Belinda with heavenly language, placing her on the same pedestal men ascribe to other beautiful women. While he directly confronts the vanity of beautiful women, and through the words of Clarissa attempts to instead channel their good humor and sense, he more subtly insults men's appointment of women to such a divine pedestal. In the end, neither Belinda nor the Baron have the lock in their possession. Despite his attempts to steal a little piece of heaven for himself, he misplaces it, signifying the fact that man has created a creature that he now cannot control. Women have been expected to present themselves as divine objects whose purpose is only to reflect the social status of the men they accompany. As a result of man's expectations of feminine beauty, women have become self-obsessed to excess, and have, as a result, disenchanted the same men.

If Pope is obsessed with the art of feminine beauty, then Swift is repulsed by the folly of it. While Pope described Belinda in angelic terms, Swift represents the female body in a grotesque manner, as “gaudy tulips raised from dung” (2349). In both “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed” and “The Lady's Dressing Room,” Swift calls out the imperfection of female art, presenting a criticism of women that extends to the capitalistic society. Images of Corrina and Celia's dressing rooms starkly contrast that of Belinda's. Swift does not color women in angelic language like Pope, but reveals their, literally, dirty secrets. He chastises other men who cannot see through woman's charade: “I pity wretched Strephon, blind / To all the charms of womankind” (2349). Strephon is an imbecile who has failed to remember that women are cut from the same cloth as men. He is foolish to expect Celia to be any more divine a creature than he is.

Despite the misogynistic tone of Pope and Swift's works, they did not damage women and their relationship to beauty, but gave them a reason to voice their struggles with it. Upon deeper inspection, their writing not only challenged the vanity of women, but insulted men for their appointment of women to such a high stature. Indeed, works by these men spawned responses from female writers of the day, who, like Montagu, in her response to “The Lady's Dressing Room,” invited Pope to continue his critical writing: “I'm glad you'll write / You'll furnish paper when I shite” (2352).


Works Cited
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. “The Turkish Embassy Letters.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch & Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 2544-2546.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. “To Lady Mar.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch & Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 2546-2548.

Pope, Alexander. “The Rape of the Lock.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch & Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 2472-2491.

Swift, Johnathan. “The Lady's Dressing Room.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch & Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 2346- 2349.

Swift, Johnathan. “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed.” 1734.

The Marriage Debt in Wilmot's “The Imperfect Enjoyment” and Behn's “The Disappointment”

In the twelfth century, the Catholic Church, in its ever-developing theology of marriage, mandated that the union between a man and woman be viewed as a contract. Interpreting Paul's first letter to the Corinthians literally, the church placed itself squarely in the bed of married couples, mandating they pay unto each other a “marriage debt.” This order required men, as well as women, to submit to sexual relations if the other spouse so desired. While this seemed like a win-win situation for the already-dominant male in the relationship, it became a strangely empowering opportunity for women. Not only did they now have some form of equality with men, they had it by way of their sexual prowess. As men are notoriously affected by their sexual desires, women found not only equality, but dominion in the bedroom. In the seventeenth century, John Wilmot and Aphra Behn, through their poetry, gave opposing perspectives on the notion of mutual sexual gratification, although their writings weren't necessarily about married couples. The marriage debt created an attitude towards sex that is perpetuated in these authors' works.

Wilmot's “The Imperfect Enjoyment” is the masculine response to mutual pleasure, and blames women themselves for male impotence. He describes the intimate scene of a man and woman entangled in passionate embrace, “both equally inspired with eager fire (3).” For Wilmot, passion only becomes enhanced when he realizes the shame of his debauchery. It is ironic that, in line 14, he claims that his lover's hand “should convey [his] soul up to her heart,” but, ever-so immediately, in line 15, “In liquid raptures [he] dissolve all o'er.” The narrator's one loving thought, signifying the romantic bond between a man and woman, pushes him over the edge and to an early ejaculation. This is to be expected, he claims, as “her hand, her foot, her very look's a cunt” (18). He blames the woman for having too much sexual power, insinuating that she could do something more to prevent his premature release.

Invoking the true ideology of the marriage debt, the narrator's lover even asks, “Is there no more?” and cries, “All this to love and rapture's due / Must we not pay a debt to pleasure, too (21-23)?” The man recognizes his inability to please this woman, and his passion quickly changes from one form to another: “And rage at last confirms me impotent” (30). His words are no longer lovingly passionate, but soaked in outrage. Wilmot suggests that women are sexually deviant creatures who prevent men from ever attaining true love, for their sexual charms are too powerful. Wilmot certainly sees the marriage debt as an unfair juxtaposition. This is further addressed in “Against Constancy,” where he argues against monogamy, instead resorting to the company of other males who will not judge his shortcomings.

Aphra Behn responds to Wilmot's blame of women for impotence in her poem, “The Disappointment.” Behn sets up the scene similarly to Wilmot. She begins with two lovers, Cloris and Lysander, in the beginnings of sexual consummation. Playing on Wilmot's love of lewdness, she explains how Lysander's passion is further ignited when he recognizes the shame that burdens Cloris: “Her eyes sweet, and yet severe / Where love and shame confusedly strive / Fresh vigour to Lysander give (21-23).” When Lysander prematurely ejaculates, and Cloris realizes he is “unable to perform the sacrifice,” she becomes confused, blushes, and runs away (70). Not only has this woman suffered the shame of allowing her virginity to be taken, she does so with lack of her own sexual gratification. However, Behn doesn't regard men with the same hostility that Wilmot uses to refer to women in this situation. Despite her lack of pleasure, she fails to condemn Lysander for his impotence. She says that “none can guess Lysander's soul,” but knows that his “silent griefs swell up to storms” (133, 135). Instead, Behn is sarcastic in her criticism of such men, simply stating, at the end, that the “shepherdess's charms … had damned him to the hell of impotence” (138, 140).

Behn's response to Wilmot doesn't punish men for their impotence – their impotence alone is punishment enough. Instead, she explains the impact of sexual relations on a woman of her era, and creates sympathy for those women who are left unsatisfied by their inadequate partners. Her ability to speak out on behalf of women is in part due to the creation of the marriage debt. This new philosophy gave women the right to equal sexual pleasure, first, within marriage, and later, in both open and closed sexual relationships.


Works Cited
Behn, Aphra. “The Disappointment.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch & Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 2126-2129.

Wilmot, John. “The Imperfect Enjoyment.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch & Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 2205-2207.

John Locke's Unrealistic Belief in God

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, philosopher John Locke attempts to set forth a new mode of thinking by logical rationalization. He accomplishes this by associating thought with the natural world to help his readers understand from where their ideas, thoughts and preconceived notions originate. While Locke is successful at relating thought to the natural world by defining our perceptions through sensation, he fails to offer justification for his belief in a supreme deity, which he admits evades the possibility of being perceived. Locke's claim for God's existence is most troubling when the logic for his other arguments unfolds so clearly. He first argues that the mind is only capable of comprehending what it has already encountered, yet later claims that it is capable of understanding and believing in a supernatural God for which it has no recollection:

If we examine the idea we have of the incomprehensible Supreme Being, we shall find that we come by it the same way; and that the complex ideas we have both of God, and separate spirits, are made of the simple ideas we receive from reflection: v.g. having, from what we experiment in ourselves, got the ideas of existence and duration; of knowledge and power; of pleasure and happiness; and of several other qualities and powers, which it is better to have than to be without; when we would frame an idea the most suitable we can to the Supreme Being, we enlarge every one of these with our idea of infinity; and so putting them together, make our complex idea of God. For that the mind has such a power of enlarging some of its ideas, received from sensation and reflection, has been already showed (2620).

In other words, Locke's prime argument for the existence of God is that the leviathan that lies within the human mind – questions we ask ourselves about infinity and the unknown – is proof that there is a supreme deity in command.

Logically, Locke's argument is not sound. He contradicts his base arguments for reason by allowing his readers one instance in which they are not expected to use it. An empirical thinker, Locke used logic to contradict thousands of years of religious doctrine. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding was pivotal to teaching his readers how to think for themselves, but also very controversial and difficult to grasp initially. My hypothesis for his conflicting arguments is that to encourage people to read his writings, Locke found it necessary to connect with them through God. Otherwise, his teachings might have been considered too blasphemous for the masses. For this essay and to test my hypothesis, I turned to research regarding Locke and his belief in God. I discovered that my theory was correct, and that Locke included a supreme being in his argument for a variety of social reasons.

The authors of the article “Locke's Idea of God: Rational Truth or Political Myth?” claim that Locke did not wish his readers to take his argument for God seriously, and that there is a hidden message within his text. “For there is good evidence that Locke thought the idea of a punishing deity had psychological value as a political myth,” they write (Bluhm 416). Locke, who was classically educated in the writings of Aristotle and Cicero, follows the latter's assertion that “we must persuade our citizens that the gods are the lords and rulers of all things, and that what is done, is done by their will and authority” (Bluhm 432).

Locke thought it important for social elites to foster in the public a belief in God as a means to controlling morality. He knew that the elite who understood the secret message would interpret it rather as a set of precepts of reasonable behavior conductive to personal security and well-being. The average reader, on the other hand, would find in God legitimacy for Locke's other arguments pertaining to social order. Locke's maturing students would eventually come to understand “God” as merely a symbol for the rational order of the universe. Locke confirms this theory in a letter to Edward Stillingfleet, where he remarks that he disguised the weakness of his argument for God's existence in the Essay so that “...by it some men might be confirmed in the belief of a God, which is enough to preserve in them true sentiments of religion and morality” (429).

Like so many other historical governing bodies and political influences, Locke used the power of fear as a means of social control. He knew that using religion as a backdrop for the natural world was the only way to attract people to it. By including God in his argument for reason, he was able to interest God-fearing Christians in a logical approach to the world around them. It isn't until David Hume comes along that Locke's reliance on God is challenged, and the conceivable is at last divided from the inconceivable.


Works Cited
Bluhm, William T., Wintfeld, Neil & Teger, Stuart H. “Locke's Idea of God: Rational Truth or Political Myth?” The Journal of Politics 42 (1980): 414-438. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Ohio University Lib., OH. 19 January 2010.

Locke, John. “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch & Kevin J. H. Dettmar. 4th ed. New York: Pearson Education Inc., 2010. 2618-2622.