 In evaluating the controversy, one would have to say that of all the encounters between the Newtonians and the free thinkers, the one between Collins and Clarke was the most philosophically significant and influential. O’Higgins holds that Collins is important to us mainly because he defends an early version of materialism. While there is surely some truth to this, O’Higgins is clearly damning Collins with faint praise. What we should recognize is that Collins was indeed a pioneer in trying to show that consciousness is a real emergent property of the brain and in this regard certainly showed much more originality than O’Higgins gives him credit for (see  note 2).  One need only compare Locke’s claim that we would need revelation to understand how matter could think and his use of the term ’superaddition’ with Collins account of emergent properties to see what an improvement in explanatory power the latter has over the former. O’Higgins also claims that Collins’ arguments are not very good. This also does not give Collins enough credit. It is true that Collins does give some arguments that are not very good. On the other hand, Collins forced Clarke to clarify his position in a number of respects. He also uncovered a number of weak points in Clarke’s position. Clarke’s poor treatment of Collins’ example of the power of a rose to produce a sweet smell in us is one example. He answered as if Collins was talking about the smell of the rose and claims that this secondary quality belongs in his second class of properties. But Collins properly objects that he was talking about the organization of the particles of the rose—the cause of this effect, and not the effect on us. Clarke’s response is weak. One of Collins’ strongest points was his critique of Clarke’s doctrine that though the soul is immaterial it is extended (Vailati 1993). One can also see how much pressure Collins is applying to Clarke’s system as the number of properties in Clarke’s third class—fictional properties—continues to mount in the course of the correspondence.