248 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 



" 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 extra- 

 ordinary concourse, and even to mend it as a 

 clockmaker 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 talnda rasa. In other 

 words, at the commencement of the eighteenth 

 century, the character of speculative thought in 



1 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." 



