inite space to the
sensorium 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 correspondence
with Clarke.[1]

[Footnote 1: "Collection of Papers which passed between the late
learned Mr. Leibnitz and Dr. Clarke."--1717.]

"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.

"4. Sir Isaac Newton and his followers have also a very odd opinion
concerning the work of God. According to their doctrine, God Almighty
wants to wind up His watch from time to time; otherwise it would cease
to move.[1] He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a
perpetual motion. Nay, the machine of God's making is so imperfect,
according to these gentlemen, that He is obliged to clean it now
and then by an extraordinary concourse, and even to mend it as a
clockmaker mends his work."

[Footnote 1: Goethe seems to have had this saying of Leibnitz in his
mind when he wrote his famous lines--

"Was waer' ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse Im Kreis das All am
Finger laufen liesse."]

It is beside the mark, at present, to inquire how far Leibnitz paints
a true picture, and how far he is guilty of a spiteful caricature of
Newton's views in these passages; and whether the beliefs which Locke
is known to have entertained are consistent with the conclusions which
may logically be drawn from some parts of his works. It is undeniable
that English philosophy in Leibnitz's time had the general character
which he ascribes to it. The phenomena of nature were held to be
resolvable into the attractions and the repulsions of particles
of matter; all knowledge was attained through the senses; the mind
antecedent to experience was a _tabula rasa_. In other words, at the
commencement of the eighteenth century, the character of speculative
thought in England was essentially sceptical, critical, and
materialistic. Why "materialism" should be more inconsistent with th