MOORE: I want to talk to you this evening about influence, specifically yours on Damaris Masham.

LOCKE: (sighs) Damaris! The light and love of my life!

MOORE: (smiles) I've always imagined that might be the case. But let's start with how much you influenced her work. She was after all, some say, the first woman philosopher of her time.

LOCKE: And a brilliant thinker. To be honest I'm not at all sure how much influence I actually had. I certainly encouraged her to publish her writings, but remember she was the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, author of ‘The True Intellectual System of the Universe’. It was really from her I learnt to appreciate some aspects of his work. I suspect she may have remained under her father's influence more than mine.

MOORE: Interesting you should have mentioned Cudworth. I have a link, admittedly tenuous, with him.

LOCKE: How's that?

MOORE: He was Master of my College at one point.

LOCKE: Clare! I recall him at Christ's.

MOORE: He was at Clare, Clare Hall as it was known then, from 1645 to 1654. In the end he left us for Christ's. But let's return to the question of your influence on Damaris.

LOCKE: What makes you think I might have had some influence on her?

MOORE: A number of reasons. For a start living in the Mashams' house, Oates, you were free to discuss her ideas with her whenever you both wished. This at the very time she was writing her ‘A Discourse Concerning the Love of God’ and her ‘Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life’. Both incidentally published anonymously. Surely Oates was a breeding ground for influence!

LOCKE: True enough. I did reside at Oates for at least a decade, but only after we'd agreed terms – a £1 a week for me and my servant's upkeep and a shilling a week for stabling my horse, Sorrell.

MOORE: So, as I said, you and she were in a position to talk over ideas on a daily basis.

LOCKE: Except when her children and her household duties, not at all relished, called her away.

MOORE: Furthermore Damaris cites you in both her works. And not only that, more significant than her citations was the reaction to her work. When ‘Occasional Thoughts’ was published it was widely believed to have been written by you. Doesn't that suggest influence?

LOCKE: Possibly, but have you any real evidence?

MOORE: Shreds of evidence, yes. For example a letter has come down to us from a Richard Gwinnett to the poet Elizabeth Thomas. He writes praising, I quote, ‘a little Posthumous Treatise of Mr Locke’. He goes on to note that the work is ‘nothing inferior to the more elaborate Works of that Ingenious author.’

LOCKE: Thank him for ‘Ingenious’, but just because Gwinnett mistakenly attributed her work to me doesn't prove I influenced her.

MOORE: It's suggestive though. But it wasn't only ‘Occasional Thoughts’ it was also her ‘Discourse’ that was attributed to you.

LOCKE: Who by this time?

MOORE: Well, John Norris for one, Mary Astell for another.

LOCKE: Those two should have known better. Damaris never liked John very much. Not sure why. He always pretended to respect my ideas, but was always critical of them, especially the Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

Moore: He did dedicate two of his works to Lady Masham.

LOCKE: In that case he should have recognised the ‘Discourse’ as her work not mine.

MOORE: The evidence for your influence on her is not only misattribution, it's also, and I believe more importantly, her terminology. In ‘Occasional Thoughts’ Damaris raises your epistemological question about the grounds of knowledge. Without quoting you she refers to ‘Knowledge immediately received from Sense or Reflection’. She uses your exact terms. The very words you use in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding for your two Fountains of Knowledge.

LOCKE: Her father certainly wouldn't have approved of that! For Ralph Cudworth God was firmly at the centre of ‘The True Intellectual System’. Since he believed the human mind contains an imprint of the Divine, our ideas had to be innate.

MOORE: So could I say that at the basis of Cudworth's epistemology was the idea that the human mind, however impaired, mirrors the mind of God.

LOCKE: You could say that. What I'd say is that Cudworth assumed the mind came furnished with ideas and knowledge, was not – what did they say I called it? – a tabula rasa. I, on the contrary, assumed all the ideas the mind came to have were the outcome of the workings of the Fountains of Sensation and Reflection. Naturally a consequence of my view was that different minds could develop ideas differently depending upon their experience of the world.

MOORE: And Damaris in ‘Occasional Thoughts’ followed your account, not her father's.

LOCKE: True. I suppose you could call that influence.

MOORE: ‘Occasional Thoughts’ has other phrases expressing ideas her father would not have shared. Damaris describes the idea of God as ‘a Proposition containing many complex ideas in it; and which we are not capable of framing till we have been long acquainted with pleasing Sensations’. Surely that could easily be a sentence from the Essay. Can you understand why you were believed to be the author? You are, after all, the man whose explanations invariably invoke Ideas! Sometimes, simple, more often complex.

LOCKE: I can see what you are driving at! I have to admit you're building a case for some influence. It will only strengthen your case if I tell you she also made some helpful comments on the ‘Abrégé’ of the Essay I was writing while in Holland.

MOORE: I recall a letter she wrote you in which she reports you asked her to point out any mistakes in the Abrégé. No one does that unless they respect the person's judgement. I quote her, ‘It will become me to show you your mistakes.’ Signed, Philoclea.

LOCKE: Ah, Philoclea! That was the name she used in those early days before I had to flee to Holland – I had no choice, a warrant had been issued for my arrest. In those days we were writing poems to each other.

MOORE: And your nom-de-plume was Philander.

LOCKE: Indeed it was. But aren't you now really asking about her influence on me? After all, as you pointed out, I lived with her for the last ten years or so of my life discussing ideas on a daily basis.

MOORE: Of course we should. But only if you agree you did exert some influence on her writings.

LOCKE: I agree. Providing you agree that questions of the influence of philosopher X over philosopher Y are generally complex and fraught with difficulties, whoever they are.

MOORE: I agree, agree wholeheartedly. However that decade at Oates was certainly a highly productive time for you.

LOCKE: Oates was a perfect refuge. During those years I revised the ‘Essay’, wrote a new Chapter, ‘Of Identity and Diversity' for Book II, made significant changes to the Chapter ‘Of Power’, wrote three editions of ‘Some Thoughts Concerning Education’, wrote ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity’ and more besides.

MOORE: I was right then, that decade was productive! And Damaris was an influential part of that creativity. Your creativity.

LOCKE: You're right of course. But what makes you so sure?

MOORE: Because you tell us. In the Preface to the Reader for ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity’, you wrote – let me read it to you – ‘The Wonderful Harmony … in all parts of the sacred History of the Gospel, was of no small Weight with me and another Person, who … every Day, asked me what more the Scripture had taught me.’ That other Person, if we're frank, was Damaris, wasn't it?

LOCKE: Well, Damaris and I, as you know from her work, did share an abiding interest in both religious and philosophical questions.

MOORE: We know too from a letter you sent to your great friend Philippe van Limborch about your respect for her judgement. You wrote that Damaris was, ‘so much occupied with study and reflection on theological and philosophical matters that you could find few men with whom you might associate with greater profit and pleasure’. You added to crown it that ‘her judgement is singularly keen’ and you knew ‘few men capable of discussing with such insight the most abstruse subjects, such as are beyond the grasp, I do not say of women, but even of the most educated men.’

LOCKE: Damaris was – how shall I put it – my closest companion during the last years of my life.

MOORE: Closest companion! She puts it differently.

LOCKE: What do you mean?

MOORE: In a letter to Leibniz she says of you that you have ‘supplied to me the Place of a Father and Brother’. You are on record as writing to Damaris saying you regard her as ‘a sister or a daughter, or something nearer than those relations’.

LOCKE: When did I write that?

MOORE: Autumn, 1690, shortly before you moved into Oates permanently. And then, alas, of course the letters stopped. Tell me more about Damaris as Philoclea. And what you had in mind by ‘something nearer than the relation of a sister or a daughter’.

LOCKE: I'll try to explain. But first I want you to understand how original, how independent Damaris' thinking was. Yes, of course there was influence, some influence at least, but Damaris had a mind of her own. It probably shone out best in her last work.

MOORE: ‘Occasional Thoughts on a Vertuous Life’?

LOCKE: Yes. ‘Vertuous’ is the key. Why, Damaris pondered, should we try to lead a virtuous life?

MOORE: The word ‘virtuous’ seems to have slipped out of common use these days.

LOCKE: Interesting. Shall I rather say lead a morally good life.

MOORE: I guess we'd all be with you then.

LOCKE: Her favourite example involved a cat. She'd say when you see a cat tormenting a mouse it has caught, it doesn't make sense to say it's a bad cat, an immoral cat. But if a man was tormenting a cat you'd certainly condemn him. Why is that, she'd ask rhetorically.

MOORE: And answer?

LOCKE: Because human beings are free agents responsible for their actions. The cat is not.

MOORE: So we are morally accountable because Damaris sees us as possessing free will, so able to choose for ourselves a virtuous course of action.

LOCKE: Free will is necessary but not of itself sufficient. Coupled with free will must be the power of reasoning. Damaris believed, as I do, that we are fundamentally free and reasoning agents. You may have noticed I changed my account of Will in the second edition of the Essay.

MOORE: Written at Oates. I did notice. Before moving into Oates you construed Will as ‘… preferring any Action to its forbearance’. However in the second edition written in Oates your revised definition of Will reads ‘the Power of the Mind to determine its thought, to the producing, continuing, or stopping of any Action, as far as it depends on us.’ This looks much more like self-conscious self-determination. Was that Damaris talking?

LOCKE: I can't claim Damaris didn't have some influence. Our talk often turned to the importance of the role of the Will.

MOORE: So it would be fair to say that as a result of your conversations you made changes to the Essay.

LOCKE: Damaris could put things more tellingly. We must, she wrote, be ‘Masters of our own Actions’ if we are to be accountable for them. Freedom to act is one essential condition for moral accountability. I agreed with her on that.

MOORE: That we are free agents was easier to believe in your Age than in mine.

LOCKE: Oh? Why?

MOORE: Let's say for now that since the seventeenth century our intellectual climate has been changed considerably by some remarkable thinkers. But the fact that you and Damaris happened to agree on the grounds of moral accountability is not giving me clear evidence of her thinking independently. It sounds more like mutual influence.

LOCKE: True. As I said questions of influence are rarely straightforward. But whenever she was thinking as a practical moralist, she thought independently. She pushed the consequences of human beings possessing free will and reason much further than I ever did. Damaris wanted to edify.

MOORE: But so did you. Three editions of ‘Some Thoughts Concerning Education’. Written at Oates.

LOCKE: Perhaps. But the level for me was personal. Damaris was much more radical, more general.

MOORE: Explain.

LOCKE: In ‘Some Thoughts’ I was simply trying to ensure that my close friends the Clarkes in bringing up their son Edward achieved the right balance, the balance between knowing things and wanting to know things.

MOORE: You put it somewhat more elegantly at the end of ‘Some Thoughts’. You wrote, ‘The Tutor should remember that his Business is not so much to teach him all that is knowable, as to raise in him a love and esteem of Knowledge and to put him in the right way of knowing and improving himself when he has a Mind to do it’. Improving himself meant I gather gaining ‘… a Mastery over his Inclinations and submitting his Appetites to Reason’.

LOCKE: That's what I believe. Damaris though attacked a much more fundamental and widespread issue. She recognised that the capacity to choose, to act according to Reason, was in all of us frequently abused. Our appetites led us not to be ‘Vertuous’. The remedy of the abuse she saw lay in early education. Who was best placed to ensure that her child grew up virtuous, why the mother of course.

MOORE: I have her words here. She wrote, ‘Before we come to a Ripeness of Understanding … the assistance of Mothers is necessary to the making of men Vertuous.’ It's an early call for the education of women.

LOCKE: I would never have written those words. It's more than a call. It's recognising that if women are to ‘make men Vertuous’ it is essential they should have a solid education in the reasoning underpinning virtuous conduct. Damaris passionately believed that a harmonious society needed women just as much as men to have the opportunity to learn that the principles of virtue consist in being able, she would say, ‘to govern our Passions and subject our Appetites to the directions of our Reason’. Damaris, in pursuing the idea of education for women was thinking her own thoughts, independent of me.

MOORE: It seems she was an early feminist. She wasn't to know it would be several centuries before women were ever admitted to full status at Cambridge.

LOCKE: Shame on you! But what did you have in mind when you said earlier that it was easier in our time to believe that human beings are free agents? It was a notion central to both of us.

MOORE: Well, the intellectual climate we currently live in has in part been created by a number of radical thinkers, among them Darwin, Marx and Freud. The one that runs directly counter to your belief in us as free agents is Freud.

LOCKE: Why Freud? What did he have to say?

MOORE: Freud's ideas have revolutionised the way we think about ourselves. Ways that profoundly affect your and Damaris' belief that we are morally accountable because we are ‘Masters of our own Actions’.

LOCKE: A revolution! That sounds serious. What's the core of this revolution.

MOORE: Difficult to summarise fairly, and doubtless I'll oversimplify, but I would say for me Freud's radical contribution is the idea that mental life begins in the Id and becomes conscious in the course of adapting to the world it finds itself in.

LOCKE: Id! What's that?

MOORE: Sorry. I slipped into Freudese. It's a term of his art. Essentially construe Id as the unconscious. Freud, a thinker who tried to be systematic, believes our conscious choices, decisions, judgements are influenced by events, experiences, often early in life, sometimes sexual, experiences we are not ordinarily conscious of. So any idea that we are ‘Masters of our own Actions’ seems, to put it mildly, far too confident of the independence of our conscious powers.

LOCKE: Intriguing. Let me see if I've got this right. This Freud is claiming that human behaviour is explicable only if processes going on within us, processes we are ordinarily unaware of, are taken into account.

MOORE: That's a way of putting it.

LOCKE: I'm going to have to read some of your Freud.

MOORE: I think you'll find his ‘Interpretation of Dreams’ somewhere on my shelves.

LOCKE: But if we're not ‘Masters of our own Actions’ where's the foundation for our moral accountability? Damaris and I rested our case on our being ‘free Agents’. But we are not free if Freud's unconscious is determining our actions.

MOORE: Steady on. Let's get our words right. ‘Influencing’ you, a master of drawing distinctions, will recognise is not the same as ‘determining’.

LOCKE: So what do you think?

MOORE: Well, I'm a child of the climate Freud, Darwin and Marx helped to create, but I do believe we are, to an extent, free agents. But only free to a degree, and that degree may be a lot smaller than I recognise.

LOCKE: So what determines the degree of freedom?

MOORE: Self-awareness. Self-awareness is all.

LOCKE: You're saying I'm going to have to look into my past experience to glean what is influencing, not determining, my present decisions and judgements.

MOORE: Afraid so.

LOCKE: I can see now why you balked at our notion of ‘free Agents’ as the foundation of moral judgements. Must seem far too cavalier. Need to read some Freud.

MOORE: Some you may resonate to, some not. I'm warning you. Some of his writings actually may bear on your view of Damaris as ‘a sister, or a daughter. Or something nearer than those relations.’ What did you have in mind by nearer than those relations? You were going to explain.

LOCKE: (hacking cough) Another time perhaps.

MOORE: Take care of that cough of yours!