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up his residence at Langford Magna, his philosophical studies must have occupied much of his time and thought in college. With what systems he was familiar, one can judge only from the references in the "Clavis" and in the "Specimen of True Philosophy." He evidently knew Aristotle only through the Schoolmen, for his quotations are never made directly. Plato he quotes but once,^[1] although Norris's "Theory of the Ideal World," well-known to Collier, is filled with Platonic references. But the scholasticism of the following centuries was a far stronger influence on Collier, interested as he was in theological studies. His work shows the influence of scholastic principles and habits of thought; and to him, as to the Schoolmen, the interest of metaphysics lay in its relation to Scripture. St. Augustine, Porphyry, Apollinaris, Cassian, Vincentius, Lirinensis, Suarez are mentioned. Through the "books of Metaphysicks" of Scheibler and Baronius, according to Sir Wm. Hamilton,^[2] he gained all his knowledge of the Metaphysic of the Schools. The original thinkers with whom he was directly familiar and whose works formed the starting point of his own were the French writers, Des Cartes and Malebranche, and his own English neighbor, John Norris.

Six months after Arthur Collier had entered