From 1741 to 1747 he lived with Lord Blantyre and Mr Hay of Drummelzier at Utrecht, and made excursions in Flanders, France and the Holy Roman Empire.
[2] Baxter's chief work, An Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul (editions 1733, 1737 and 1745; with appendix added in 1750 in answer to an attack in Maclaurin's Account of Sir I. Newton's Philosophical Discoveries, and dedication to John Wilkes), examines the properties of matter.
He claimed the argument was supported by an analysis of the phenomena of dreams, which are ascribed to direct spiritual influences.
E.g. it was criticized by Benjamin Franklin in a letter which pointed on Baxter's lack of understand in mechanics,[3] yet left a lasting impression on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who said, 'I should not wonder if I found that Andrew had thought more on the subject of Dreams than any other of our Psychologists, Scotch or English'.
[4] His work is an attack on John Toland's Letters to Serena (1704), which argued that motion is essential to matter, and on Locke and Berkeley.