God, Matter and Eternity in John Locke’s Essay

The paper investigates Locke’s idea of eternity as infinite duration and his arguments against the eternity of matter in Essay IV.x. While scholars generally agree that Locke found inspiration for this chapter in Pierre Nicole, or alternatively, in Ralph Cudworth, the paper shows that he also relied on another source, Henry More, in order to rebut the opinion that matter could be the intelligent designer of the universe. Interestingly, Locke deployed an argument that More had used against the substance monism of the Kabbalah in 1677, but he remodelled it so as to make it less dependent on some metaphysical assumptions that were in More’s argument. Once Locke’s debt to More is acknowledged, the arguments against the eternity of matter in the Essay appear much more intelligible than before, and the important role played by More’s metaphysics in Locke’s attempt to prove the immateriality of God becomes more evident.