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men of True Philosophy" identifies this book with the "Dialogues."[1]
Whatever one's conclusion about the relation between Collier and Berkeley, there can be no doubt that Collier's "third" and "fourth" arguments anticipate Kant's first and second antinomies. Just as Kant argues that "the world is not a whole existing in itself" from the fact that it can be proved to be both finite and infinite in time and in space, so Collier argues that "an external world . . . . must be both finite and infinite," and that "that which is both finite and infinite in extent is absolutely non-existent."[2] And as Kant argues that material substances are "nothing outside our representations" from the fact that they can be shown to be both infinitely divisible and ultimately indivisible, so Collier affirms "in like manner as before, that external matter is both finitely and infinitely divisible, and, consequently, that there is no such thing as external matter."[3]
It must be granted that the "Clavis Universalis" is more than a "metaphysical curiosity."
- ↑ As Leslie Stephen points out, in his article on Collier in the Dictionary of National Biography, this reference (on p. 114 of the "Specimen of True Philosophy" as given in the Parr edition) is the only one in Collier's published writings. Stephen credits Collier with entire independence in the conception of the theory.
- ↑ "Clavis Universalis," p. 63.
- ↑ Since this introduction was written, in its first form, the comparison has been made in more detail by Professor Arthur O. Lovejoy in a paper on "Kant and the English Platonists" in "Essays Philosophical and Psychological in honor of William James" by "His Colleagues at Columbia University," Longmans, Green & Co., 1908.