Arthur Collier, an English idealist philosopher, was born at Langford Magna, Wiltshire, where his father was rector. In 1697 he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, but transferred in 1698 to Balliol. He took orders and in 1704 succeeded to the family living at Langford Magna. Such events as mark his life were of a private character. He was in constant financial difficulties, arising, it is said, from his own impracticality and the extravagance of his wife; his writings did nothing to bring him into contact with a wider world since scarcely anybody read them. He was buried at Langford on September 9, 1732.

Collier makes no mention of John Locke. He read George Berkeley (with whose views his own partly coincide), but only after the publication of Collier's major work, Clavis Universalis (1713). René Descartes, Nicolas Malebranche, and Collier's neighbor John Norris were the philosophers who particularly interested Collier, although he...