658 GEORGEBERKELEY
PHILONOUS: I deny it to be possible; and have, if I mistake not, evidently proved,
from your own concessions, that it is not. In the common sense of the word matter,is
there any more implied than an extended, solid, figured, movable substance, existing
without the mind? And have not you acknowledged, over and over, that you have seen
evident reason for denying the possibility of such a substance?
HYLAS: True, but that is only one sense of the term matter.
PHILONOUS: But is it not the only proper genuine received sense? And, if matter, in
such a sense, be proved impossible, may it not be thought with good grounds absolutely
impossible? Else how could anything be proved impossible? Or, indeed, how could
there be any proof at all one way or other, to a man who takes the liberty to unsettle and
change the common signification of words?
HYLAS: I thought philosophers might be allowed to speak more accurately than
the vulgar, and were not always confined to the common acceptation of a term.
PHILONOUS: But this now mentioned is the common received sense among
philosophers themselves. But, not to insist on that, have you not been allowed to take
matter in what sense you pleased? And have you not used this privilege in the utmost
extent; sometimes entirely changing, at others leaving out, or putting into the definition
of it whatever, for the present, best served your design, contrary to all the known rules
of reason and logic? And hath not this shifting, unfair method of yours spun out our dis-
pute to an unnecessary length; matter having been particularly examined, and by your
own confession refuted in each of those senses? And can any more be required to prove
the absolute impossibility of a thing, than the proving it impossible in every particular
sense that either you or any one else understands it in?
HYLAS: But I am not so thoroughly satisfied that you have proved the impossibility
of matter, in the last most obscure abstracted and indefinite sense.
PHILONOUS: When is a thing shown to be impossible?
HYLAS: When a repugnancy is demonstrated between the ideas comprehended in
its definition
PHILONOUS: But where there are no ideas, there no repugnancy can be demonstrated
between ideas?
HYLAS: I agree with you.
PHILONOUS: Now, in that which you call the obscure indefinite sense of the word
matter, it is plain, by your own confession, there was included no idea at all, no sense
except an unknown sense; which is the same thing as none. You are not, therefore, to
expect I should prove a repugnancy between ideas, where there are no ideas; or the
impossibility of matter taken in an unknownsense, that is, no sense at all. My business
was only to show you meant nothing;and this you were brought to own. So that, in all
your various senses, you have been showed either to mean nothing at all, or, if anything,
an absurdity. And if this be not sufficient to prove the impossibility of a thing, I desire
you will let me know what is.
HYLAS: I acknowledge you have proved that matter is impossible; nor do I see
what more can be said in defence of it. But, at the same time that I give up this, I suspect
all my other notions. For surely none could be more seemingly evident than this once
was: and yet it now seems as false and absurd as ever it did true before. But I think we
have discussed the point sufficiently for the present. The remaining part of the day
I would willingly spend in running over in my thoughts the several heads of this
morning’s conversation, and tomorrow shall be glad to meet you here again about the
same time.
PHILONOUS: I will not fail to attend you.