Damaris Cudworth, John Locke, and Anthony Ashley Cooper

Cudworth married a woman named Damaris, and they had several children. One of these was a daughter, also named Damaris, born 18 January 1659. There is no indication that any of the other Cudworth children was interested in philosophy, but Damaris certainly was. By the time she was in her early twenties, she had absorbed the views of her father and Henry More, was well versed in the sermons of John Smith, and knew at least the basics (and probably more than that) of the philosophy of the Stoics and Descartes. That Damaris came to this knowledge despite the formidable obstacles to education placed before women of the seventeenth century attests to her native intelligence, to her love of ideas, and to her close relationship with a philosophically gregarious and relatively enlightened father.

Later in life Damaris became an active player in the philosophical debates of her day. She wrote two books – A Discourse concerning the Love of God, published in 1696, and Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life, published in 1705 – in which she outlined positions on morality, religion, and education and developed sharp critiques of the views of a number of her contemporaries. In 1704–5 she engaged in an extended philosophical correspondence with Leibniz. And Damaris's dearest friend was John Locke, with whom she discussed philosophy on a regular, long-term basis.