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in substance with Berkeley's; and he appears," Reid adds, "to understand the whole strength of his cause. Though he is not deficient in metaphysical acuteness, his style is disagreeable, being full of conceits, of new-coined words, scholastic terms, and perplexed sentences." Reid ends by saying, "I have taken the liberty to give this short account of Collier's book, because I believe it is rare and little known. I have only seen one copy of it, which is in the University library of Glasgow."^[1]

This notice attracted Dugald Stuart to the work, and in his "Dissertation: Exhibiting the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical, and Political Philosophy" he compares Collier with Norris. "Another very acute metaphysician," he says, "has met with still greater injustice. His name is not to be found in any of our Biographical Dictionaries. In point of date, his publication is some years posterior to that of Norris, and therefore it does not possess the same claims to originality; but it is far superior to it in logical closeness and precision, and is not obscured to the same degree with the mystical theology which Norris (after the example of Malebranche) connected with the scheme of Idealism. Indeed, when compared with the writings of Berkeley himself, it