^6 Mechanical Philosophy. [ChaI*. I. 



the learned and acute Dr. Samuel Clarke. Tho 

 papers which gave rise to this controversy, toge- 

 ther ivith the various answers, replies, and re- 

 joinders which took place in the course of it, were 

 transmitted from the one party to the other, 

 through the hands of queen Caroline, consort of 

 George I, and the patron and correspondent of 

 Leibnitz. They were afterwards published, and 

 hold an important' place in the philosophical his- 

 tory of the age. 



Soon after the theory of monads was published. 

 Christian Wolfe, a philosopher of Breslau, formed, 

 on the foundation of this theory, a new system of 

 Cosmology, digested and demonstrated in a mathe- 

 matical method. He was one of the most volu- 

 minous writers in philosophy which the century 

 afforded, and is considered as the great interpreter 

 and advocate of the Leibnitz ian system-. 



Another theory of matter^ which distinguished 

 the eighteenth century, was that of Father Bosco- 

 vich *, a learned Jesuit of Italy. — Newton paid 

 little attention to the individual atoms of which 

 matter is composed. The attraction and repulsion 

 of which he spoke, appear to refer chiefl}^ to the 

 laws of motion of the larger bodies which we be- 

 hold. He expressed a suspicion, indeed, that " As 

 ihe great movements of the solar system are regu- 



* Roger Joseph Boscovidi was born at Ragusa in 1/11, and 

 died at Milan in l/b/. When the order of Jesuits was sup- 

 pressed, he was invited to Paris, and made director of the optical 

 instruments of the marine j in which office he was led to im- 

 prove the tlix;ory of achromalic glasses. He returned to Italy in 

 1/83. His philosophical works ai'c numerous, profound, and ele- 

 gant. He published a poem, entitled, Dc Solis ac Luna Dcfec* 

 tibiis, which is hii^hly esteemed. 



