NEW ESSAYS 39! 



the controversy on this subject, and will take the liberty 

 of saying what I think about it. The late Bishop 

 of Worcester, fearing (in my opinion without much 

 ground) that our author's doctrine of ideas was liable 

 to some abuses prejudicial to the Christian faith, set 

 himself to examine certain parts of it in his Vindication 

 of the Doctrine of the Trinity ; and having done justice to 

 this excellent author, in recognizing that he thinks the 

 existence of the mind [esprit] as certain as that of the 

 body, although the one of these substances is as little 

 known as the other, he asks (pp. 241 sqq.) 137 how re- 

 flexion can assure us of the existence of the mind [espn] 

 if God can give to matter the faculty of thinking, accord- 

 ing to the opinion of our author (bk. iv. ch. 3), since 

 thus the way of ideas, which should enable us to dis- 

 criminate l38 what may be proper to the soul and what 

 to the body, would become useless, while yet it was said 

 in the second book of the Essay on the Understanding 

 (ch. 23, 15, 27, 28), that the operations of the soul 

 furnish us with the idea of the mind [esprit], and that 

 the understanding along with the will makes this idea 

 as intelligible to us as the nature of body is made intelli- 

 gible to us by solidity and impulse. This is how our 

 author replies in his first letter (p. 65) 139 : 'I think 

 I have proved that there is a spiritual substance in us, 



which he frequently refers to it and likens it to his own controversy 

 with Arnauld. He has ' no doubt that Locke will come well out of 

 it. He [Locke] has too much judgment to give an advantage to 

 messieurs les ecdesiasliques, who are the natural directors of the 

 peoples and whose formularies must be followed as much as 

 possible.' (Gr. iii. 216.) Leibniz also wrote two accounts of the 

 controversy, with comments of his own. (G. iii. 223 sqq.) See 

 also Foucher de Careil, Lettres et Opuscules inedits de Leibniz, Introduc- 

 tion, pp. Ixii-lxxxiii. 



137 Stillingfleet's Works (1710), vol. iii. p. 505. 



138 E. reads i investigate ' [discuter] instead of discerner. 



139 Locke's Works (ed. 1823), vol. iv. pp. 32 sqq. ; Bonn's ed., 

 vol. ii. p. 387 ; Eraser's ed. of the Essay, vol. ii. p. 193 note. Here, 

 and in other passages quoted, I give the words of the author not 

 re-translating from Leibniz. 



