Page:Clavis universalis (IA clavisuniversali00colliala).pdf/11

In the early eighteenth century, metaphysical speculation turned from the material world toward the inner life of man. Des Cartes and Malebranche in France, and Locke in England, had stripped the external world of its warmth and light and color and had left to it little save the character of extension. The completely idealistic theory of matter was formulated at nearly the same time, and in apparent independence, by George Berkeley and by Arthur Collier. And yet Berkeley alone commonly has credit for the metaphysical discovery, while Collier's little volume of scarce a hundred pages remained practically unnoticed for more than fifty years.

The book seems to have attracted little or no attention even at the time of its publication. Had not Dr. Reid chanced upon it in the library at Glasgow, it might never have been known. Reid appreciated the value of the book, and in his "Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man," published in 1785, gives it brief notice. After a discussion of Norris's "Essay toward the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World," he says that he ought not to omit mention of "an author of far inferior name, Arthur Collier. . . . His arguments are the same