ents of the particles of matter, so that it is motion which
individualizes matter in general into particular things. As the Letters
ascribe the purposive construction of organic beings to a divine reason, so
the _Pantheisticon_ also stops short before it reaches the extreme of naked
materialism. Everything is from the whole; the whole is infinite, one,
eternal, all-rational. God is the force of the whole, the soul of
the world, the law of nature. The treatise includes a liturgy of the
pantheistic society with many quotations from the ancient poets.

Anthony Collins (1676-1729), in his _Discourse of Free-thinking_, shows
the right of free thought _(i. e_., of judgment on rational grounds) in
general, from the principle that no truth is forbidden to us, and that
there is no other way by which we can attain truth and free ourselves from
superstition, and the right to apply it to God and the Bible in particular,
from the fact that the clergy differ concerning the most important matters.
The fear that the differences of opinion which spring from freethinking may
endanger the peace of society lacks foundation; on the contrary, it is
only restriction of the freedom of thought which leads to disorders, by
weakening moral zeal. The clergy are the only ones who condemn liberty of
thought. It is sacrilege to hold that error can be beneficial and truth
harmful. As a proof that freethinking by no means corrupts character,
Collins gives in conclusion a list of noble freethinkers from Socrates down
to Locke and Tillotson. Among the replies to the views of Collins we may
mention the calmly objective Boyle Lectures by Ibbot, and the sharp and
witty letter of Richard Bentley, the philologist. Neither of these attacks
Collins's leading principle, both fully admitting the right to employ the
reason, even in religious questions; but they dispute the implication that
freethinking is equivalent to contentious opposition. On the one hand, they
maintain that Collins's thinking is too free, that is, unbridled, hasty,
presumptuous, and paradoxical; on the other, that it is not free enough
(from prejudice).

After Shaftesbury had based morality on a natural instinct for the
beautiful and had made it independent of religion, as well as served the
cause of free thought by a keenly ironical campaign against enthusiasm and
orthodoxy, and Clarke had furnished the representatives of natural religion
a useful principle of morals in the objective rationali