Following the publication of this dissertation, no significant political philosopher used the patriarchal paradigm again. In this aspect, though it is not frequently read today, Locke's First Treatise of Government was extremely significant in that it cleared the philosophical decks of a long-standing orthodox argument that could not withstand serious investigation.

Locke offered an elaborate case for a government that must be both responsible for and responsive to the concerns of the governed in his Second Treatise on Government. Locke saw the natural human condition as one of full freedom and equality, in which everyone enjoyed the inherent rights of life, liberty, and property unrestrictedly.

In contrast to Hobbes, Locke saw humans in their natural form as creatures of reason and inherent goodness rather than uncontrollable passion and selfishness. Before entering into a political compact, human people, according to Locke, have a significant ability for living more or less peacefully in community.

What they encounter in nature is not a state of war, but a condition of rivalry and minor conflict that need the intervention of a political authority to solve issues rather than imposing sovereign power.

They engage into the compact to form a political society in order to safeguard and preserve the rights, liberty, and property that they already have prior to the establishment of political power. In this regard, government exists to safeguard the finest achievements and liberties.

For Locke, the struggle that Hobbes claimed defined the state of nature appeared only when rulers failed to safeguard people's inherent freedom and sought to enslave them via absolute control. The ruler-ruled relationship is one of trust, and if the rulers break that trust, the governed have the right to replace them. In this way, Locke's view was similar to Thomas Aquinas', who likewise authorized insurrection when the government broke natural rules.

In his Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Locke utilized the premises of his unpublished Second Treatise to support widespread religious tolerance among Christians, which he regarded as a solution to the disastrous religious warfare of the previous two centuries.

As a result, Locke advocated for a broad range of religious tolerance among various voluntary Christian organisations. He did not, however, tolerate Roman Catholics, whom he felt had pledged loyalty to a foreign sovereign (the pope), non-Christians, or atheists, whom he considered could not be trusted to fulfill their promise.

Despite these constraints, Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration laid the groundwork for the future expansion of toleration, religious liberty, and the separation of church and state. His ideal of such broad tolerance was partially achieved in England after 1688, and most completely realized in the United States during the American Revolution.

Finally, much as Newton established laws of astronomy and gravitation, Locke aimed to uncover the fundamental patterns of human cognition.

He did so in his most immediately famous book, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), which became the most important work in European psychology during the eighteenth century. Locke depicted a person's mind at birth as a blank slate, the content of which would be decided by sensory experience. His mental view has been accurately compared to an early version of behaviorism.

It was a reformer's psychology that argued that improving the environment may improve the human condition.

Despite his rejection of the Christian idea of original sin, Locke felt his psychology had preserved religious knowledge.

One of the most important aspects of science's growth was the evolving notion that really new information about nature and humanity might be found. The rediscovery of Aristotle and the emergence of humanistic learning in the late Middle Ages turned back to the ancients to rediscover the type of knowledge that later Europeans need.

Luther and the other Reformers saw themselves as reclaiming a more accurate grasp of the original Christian message. Proponents of the new scientific knowledge and the new philosophy, on the other hand, wanted what Bacon referred to as the development of learning. New knowledge would be developed on a constant basis. This vision necessitated the establishment of new institutions.

The growth of natural knowledge had far-reaching societal consequences. Both the new science and the philosophical perspective linked with it.