Matthew Fielding Locke
After the war, Locke returned to Mississippi, and in 1849 married Elizabeth A. Biue. Shortly thereafter they moved to Upshur County, Texas. He established a plantation about 13 miles (21 km) northeast of present-day Gilmer and founded the nearby town of LaFayette (which he named after his son, LaFayette C. Locke, who was born in 1850). Locke began the first of two terms as a state representative in 1855 in the Sixth Texas Legislature. In the Seventh Legislature, Locke was elected Speaker of the House "pro tempore" on 26 December 1857 when Speaker William S. Taylor took ill. When Taylor resigned on 18 January 1858, Locke was elected Speaker over Reps. Isaac N. Dennis and John Henry Brown, 39 votes to 14 and 13, respectively.
John Locke
Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as David Hume, Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or "tabula rasa". Contrary to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception. This is now known as empiricism. An example of Locke's belief in empiricism can be seen in his quote, "whatever I write, as soon as I discover it not to be true, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it into the fire." This shows the ideology of science in his observations in that something must be capable of being tested repeatedly and that nothing is exempt from being disproven. Challenging the work of others, Locke is said to have established the method of introspection, or observing the emotions and behaviours of one's self.