250 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 



otherwise it would cease to move.* 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 extraor- 

 dinary concourse, and even to mend it as a clock- 

 maker mends his work." 



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 New- 

 ton'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 Leib- 

 nitz'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 ante- 

 cedent 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 such " materialism " f should 

 be more inconsistent with the existence of a 



* Goethe seems to have had this saying of Leibnitz in 

 his mind when he wrote his famous lines 



" Was war' ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse 



Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse." 

 f See Note A appended to this Essay. 



