Fritz Mauthner's Critique of Locke's Idea of God

In his book Der Atheismus und seine Geschichte im Abendlande Fritz Mauthner asks what the place of Locke’s idea of God is in the Western history of atheism. In the philosophy of Locke he appreciates the psychology of cognition which was related to the philosophical critique of language, developed in the third part of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. However, Locke did not have the courage to extract consequences which D. Hume and I. Kant drew in their critique of the idea of substance, including the idea of God. It indicates that Locke remained under the influence of the Western Christian tradition, although at the same time he undermined its foundations. Mauthner accepts the thesis of his contemporary H. Vaihinger that the name of ’God’ means a utilitarian fiction rather than an extra-mental being.