Abstract

This book is the continuation of a project begun by the author in his Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain. In that work Yolton showed that Locke's suggestion that God might have given the power of thought to matter itself had significant effects in Britain. The present work makes clear that Locke's passing comment also had significant and quite varied effects in France. Yolton himself characterizes this book as telling the story of "the adventures of Locke's suggestion in France." These adventures are for him "picaresque because of the way this suggestion appears, reappears, is attacked and defended in so many places and in such different contexts".