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CLAVIS UNIVERSALIS

perceiveth it,"[1] and has no existence independent of mind. The first of these propositions Collier accepts "as an unquestionable axiom,"[1] inasmuch as it is the word of God. The second he has demonstrated in the "Clavis Universalis." But, though he has there proved that body must exist in mind, he has not, beyond bare suggestions, shown how this is possible. In the "Clavis," the quasi-externeity of visible objects is spoken of as the "effect of the will of God,(as it is his will that light and colours should seem to be without the soul)."[2] Also Collier speaks[3] of the "great mundane idea of created (or rather twice created) matter, by which all things are produced, or rather . . . . by which the great God gives sensations to all his thinking creatures." To the more careful study of the implications of the doctrine that "the material world exists in mind," Collier devotes the "Specimen of True Philosophy." In brief, he holds that matter is an accident or form of mind and has no existence apart from mind; that the sensible world of each individual exists by reason. of his perceiving it, and has the relation of similitude, not of absolute identity, to that of every other individual; and, finally, that these individual minds. or spirits exist only in dependence on, and as far as they participate in, the one original substance, which is itself mind or spirit.

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Specimen of True Philosophy, p. 115 in the Parr edition.
  2. ↑ "Clavis Universalis," p. 9.
  3. ↑ Ibid., p. 12.
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