290 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [xn. 



agreed to call &quot; materialism ; &quot; and when Locke and 

 Collins maintained that matter may possibly be able to 

 think, and Newton himself could compare infinite 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 



&quot; 1. Natural religion itself seems to decay [in Eng 

 land] very much. Many will have human souls to be 

 material ; others make God Himself a corporeal Being. 



&quot; 2. Mr. Locke and his followers are uncertain, at 

 least, whether the soul be not material and naturally 

 perishable. * 



&quot; 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. 



&quot; 4. Sir Isaac Newton and his followers have also a 

 very odd opinion concerning the work of God. Ac 

 cording to their doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind 

 up His watch from time to time j otherwise it would 

 cease to move. 2 He had not, it seems, sufficient fore 

 sight 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/ 



It is beside the mark, at present, to inquire how far 



1 &quot; Collection of Papers which passed between the late learned Mr. Leibnitz 

 and Dr. Clarke.&quot; 1717. 



a Goethe seems to have had this saying of Leibnitz in his mind when he 

 wrote his famous lines 



&quot;Was war ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse 

 Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse.&quot; 



