John Locke, "Hobbist': of sleeping souls and thinking matter

In this paper, I consider Isaac Newton's fevered accusation that John Locke is a Hobbist.' I suggest a number of ways in which Locke's account of the mind-body relation could plausibly be construed as Hobbesian. Whereas Newton conceives of the human mind as an immaterial substance and venerates it as a finite image of the Divine Mind, I argue that Locke utterly deflates the religious, ethical, and metaphysical significance of an immaterial soul. Even stronger, I contend that there is good reason to suspect that Locke is a crypto-materialist, at least with respect to human beings, and in this respect, could reasonably be labeled a Hobbist.'