An important work in the debate between materialists and dualists, the public correspondence between Samuel Clarke and Anthony Collins provided the framework for arguments over consciousness and personal identity in eighteenth-century Britain. In Clarke's view, mind and consciousness are so unified that they cannot be compounded into wholes or divided into parts, so mind and consciousness must be distinct from matter. Collins, by contrast, was a perceptive advocate of a materialist account of mind, who defended the possibility that thinking and consciousness are emergent properties of the brain.

In this edition, selections from the correspondence are presented according to lines of argument for improved readability. Appendices include philosophical writings that influenced, and responded to, the correspondence.