ABSTRACT
“The great question”, as John Norris calls it, “whether Matter can think” was raised by the materialistic theories of his time. In reply to them he might have been prepared to fall back upon the Cartesian argument for the separate existence of thinking substance. Passing to the question of the nature of thought, Norris modestly disclaims any power of explaining what thought is per se. The important point with him, as elsewhere, is not psychological analysis, but the reality of a conceptual world or whole of truth more immediately present to us, however confusedly apprehended, than that of materially existing things. It is impossible to claim for Norris that he was an original thinker in the sense that may be claimed for his contemporary Locke. On the appearance of the Essay on the Human Understanding in 1690, it was sent to Norris by a friend with the request that he should give him his opinion of it.
