Determinism and Freewill: Anthony Collins' "A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty" (review)

348 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The main defect of the formalization presented by Professor Naes$ is that it does not--and at least in some cases it is not clear that it can consistently-express positions that Naess attributes to Spinoza. In addition, Naess devotes little attention to the structure of Spinoza's demonstrations and hence ignores, or abstracts from, a considerable part of the evidence one would think is needed to determine the structure of the theorems attributed to Spinoza. This omission is not unexpected, however, given that Naess does not wish to set out his representation of Spinoza more geometrico. But that we are not given an axiomatized theory, nor a very detailed discussion of Spinoza's attempted proofs of theorems, is unimportant if our purpose is not so much to understand Spinoza, as to put a Spinozistic philosophy to work. CHARLESE. JARRETT University of Alberta Anthony Collins. Determinism and Freewill: Anthony Collins' "A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty. ""Edited by J. O'Higgins. International Archives of the History of Ideas, series minor 18. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976, Pp. vii + 127, 40 Gld. The physical layout of the book immediately catches the eye. The first fifty pages contain O'Higgins's introductory essays printed in a normal format. Then at page 50 one rotates the book through 90 degrees in order to read a facsimile of "The second Edition corrected" of CoUins's Inquiry. The facsimile consists in one opening of the original volume reproduced sideways on each page of the present book. The effect is somewhat like columns of newsprint. The second edition was originally a mean, narrow piece of printing; and reproduced in about four-fifths of its original size, the result is cramped, ugly, and, in the case of marginal notes and certain italicized passages, quite difficult to read. One other inconvenience to the eye is three page numbers per page: two from 1717and one from 1976. There seems to be no reason (at least O'Higgins offers none) for preferring the second edition to the third edition (1735). The latter has virtually the same text as the former but in a larger and vastly better format, which could have been set the right way up, page for page, in a modern edition. O'Higgins's introductory essays-on deism; Collins's life and writings; the freewill controversy and its origins in Hobbes, Locke, Bayle, King, and Leibniz; together with a critical appraisal of the Inquiry--these are generally interesting but not always fortunate in every detail. His list of British editions (p. 7) is incomplete. The ones he gives are: 1717(lst and 2nd eds.), 1735 (3rd ed.), 1749 (4th ed., Glasgow), and an edition brought out in 1790 by Joseph Priestley. But the National Union Catalogue lists a London edition of 1727 (1 have not seen it), and an interesting edition was brought out, again in London, in 1890 with annotations by G. W. Foote and a biographical introduction by J. M. Wheeler. O'Higgins also observes (p. 7) that "in England there was only one reply to the work, that of Samuel Clarke." This is not correct. Another reply appearer in 1717 in London and has been attributed to Lowe. One may take issue with the editor over other small points. For example, he remarks that the deists "all held that the existence of God and of his essential attributes can be rationally demonstrated" (p. 1). But it is not unequivocally certain even that Collins himself subscribed to this.' The overmastering cause of surprise and irritation to the reader is, however, O'Higgins's continual belittling of his own author: "Clarke got by far the better of the debate" (p. 4); "[The Discourse] was savagely and effectively dealt with . . . by Bentley" (ibid.); "He solved the problem to his own satisfaction..." (p. 6); "This misconception is a cardinal criticism of Collins' book" (p. 15); "The points he made were not new" (p. 26); ' The point is discussed by D. Berman in "Anthony Collins and the Question of Atheism in the early Part of the Eighteenth Century," Proceedingsof the Royal Irish Academy (1975), pp. 85-102. BOOK REVIEWS 349 "Here he was in error...