For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.

But he did not deny the reality of evil. Michael Zuckert has argued that Locke launched liberalism by tempering Hobbesian absolutism and clearly separating the realms of Church and State. However Locke never refers to Hobbes by name and may instead have been responding to other writers of the day.

He postulated that the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to pre-existing Cartesian philosophy he maintained that we are born without innate ideas and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception. John Locke FRS (pron.