Anthony Collins: aspects of his thought and writings

Abstract

The time seems appropriate for a discussion of Anthony Collins' works. Not only will 1976 mark the 300th anniversary of his birth, but it is also only recently that the first comprehensive study of Collins has appeared. This is James O'Higgins' Anthony Collins: the man and his works (The Hague, 1970); and like its subject this study has received less critical attention than it deserves. My primary aim, in what follows, is to fill up gaps in, or supplement, O'Higgins' pioneer work. For this reason, I shall have little, if anything, to say about Collins as county-justice, book-collector and biblical scholar; for O'Higgins has provided us with admirable pictures of Collins in these roles.1 The gaps that I shall try to fill in concern the nature of Collins' thought, his position in the history of philosophy, and also some bibliographical or authorship questions. Collins, I hope to show, was more than a mere free-thinker. He was a champion of cognitive language and secular logic: a defender of the minimal conditions of reason against important theological qualifications. I suggest, too, that it is illuminating to see Collins as an epistemological rationalist, who stands between Locke and Berkeley in the history of philosophy. Before examining Collins' writings, however, I shall consider some external evidence as to the nature of his thought.