Abstract
A recent article by David Fate Norton serves as a convenient starting point for my paper because in attacking the Myth of 'British Empiricism', he appeals to the philosophies of Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) and Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715) in order to question Locke's supremacy as the 'original' empiricist, and also the directness of his influence on Berkeley and Hume.' Thus, Norton serves an important function, in line with current trends in the history of ideas, of denying any simple division between developments in continental and British philosophies in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Nevertheless, his manner of dubbing Gassendi rather than Locke the Founder of Modern Empiricism, by contrast with Locke draws on some slighlty reductive notions of 'origin' and 'influence', with due respect for Norton's salutary contributions to the 'history of ideas.' We begin with two representative statements about Gassendi's importance for Locke. R.I. Aaron, in his classic study of Locke, states:
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