Hume : with helps to the study of Berkeley : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley.

Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hume : with helps to the study of Berkeley : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    269/348 (page 247)
    But the doctrine that all the phenomena of nature are resolvable into mechanism is what people have agreed to call “ materialism; ” and when Locke and Collins maintained that matter may possibly be able to think, and Newton himself could compare infinite space to the sen- sorium of the Deity, it was not wonderful that the English philosophers should be attacked as they were by Leibnitz in the famous letter to the Princess of Wales, which gave rise to his corre- spondence with Clarked “ 1. Natural religion itself seems to decay [in England] very much. Many will have human souls to be material; others make God Himself a corporeal Being. “ 2. Mr. Locke and his followers are uncertain, at least, whether the soul be not material and naturally perishable. “3. Sir Isaac Newton says that space is an organ which God makes use of to perceive things by. But if God stands in need of any organ to perceive things by, it will follow that they do not depend altogether upon Him, nor were produced by Him. regylares cohserent vel ab invicem fugantur et recedunt; quibns viribus ignolis, Philosopbi hactenus Naturam frustra tentarunt. Stcto autem qudd vel huic philosophandi raodo, vel veriori, aficui, principia hie posita lucem aliquam praebebunt. ”—Preface to First Edition of Prinei’pia, May 8, 1686. ^ Collection of Papers which passed between the learned late Mr. Leibnitz and. Ibr. Clarke.—i?17.