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nection between the image of reason that legitimizes these arguments and the bodily
dispositions that sustain them.
Locke’s own contribution to this negotiation follows from his intervention in the
controversy aboutadiaphora—what we may translate as ‘‘things indifferent’’—which
dates to an early essay from 1660 (published in 1967 under the titleTwo Tracts on Govern-
ment). There Locke argues: (1) that there are things indifferent to salvation and blessed-
ness, (2) that things indifferent concern aspects of religious worship not mentioned
explicitly in the Scripture, and (3) that civil government has a right to legislate things
indifferent in order to maintain the peace and security of the commonwealth.^13 Of these
claims, the last is the most controversial, something Locke realizes in his more mature
writings, turning his interpretation of things indifferent into an argument in favor of a
certain distance with regard to disputes over religion. He argues this in theEpistola:

[If] I be marching on with my utmost vigour, in that way which, according to the

sacred geography, leads straight toJerusalem; why I am beaten and ill used by others,

because, perhaps, I wear not buskins; because my hair is not of the right cut; because,

perhaps, I have not been dipt in the right fashion; because I eat flesh upon the road,

or some other food which agrees with my stomach; because I avoid certain by-ways,

which seem unto me to lead into briars or precipices; because, amongst the several

paths that are in the same road, I choose that to walk in which seems to be the

straightest and cleanest; because I avoid to keep company with some travellers that

are less grave, and others that are more sour than they ought to be; or in fine, because

I follow a guide that either is, or is not, clothed in white, and crowned with a mitre?

Certainly, if we consider right, we shall find that for the most part they are such

frivolous things as these, that, without any prejudice to religion or the salvation of

souls, if not accompanied with superstition or hypocrisy, might either be observed

or omitted; I say, they are such like things as these, which breed implacable enmities

among Christian brethren, who are all agreed in the substantial and truly fundamen-

tal part of religion.^14

What role does the endurance of pain and suffering play in this performative account of
human experience? At first, it would seem that pain and suffering are everywhere—after
all, we are talking about a person who is being ‘‘beaten and ill used by others’’ because of
his or her religion. But the way in which Locke connects pain and suffering to the image
of reason suggests, nonetheless, a misrecognition of their nature. This is so because the
connection itself relies on the doctrine of empiricism, which emphasizes the role that
sensory experience plays in the pursuit of knowledge. Locke is the first to reckon how this
leads to a condition of contingency that not only causes difference of opinion but also
frustrates the attempt to reduce or increase the effects of pain and suffering. We might
say that for Locke pain and suffering are dispositions of the body that, at least in principle,

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