This book appears in a Philosophers in Perspective series which, according to the editorial preface, is designed to offset the shortcomings both of selections of readings and of collections of articles. The author, who was President of St John's College, Oxford, has endeavoured to give a comprehensive survey of Lock's work, including his less well-known and unpublished writings.

The book is in three parts. In the first part,'Our Knowledge of Things and People', Mabbott proceeds from a consideration of Simple and Complex ideas and the notions of Substance and Power to problems of Mind and Personal Identity. He observes that while Locke's theory of Simple and Complex ideas has had no lasting influence, any empiricist theory has to face the question of the extent to which understanding the meanings of words depends on direct experience or ostensive definition, and this is bound to raise the distinction between simple and complex terms. After dealing with Locke's difficulties with the notion of substance, Mabbott enters on to the question of mind and body. He considers that Locke's' single-substance'theory is more in line with treatments such as that given by Ryle who exposed the limitations of a Cartesian'two-