THREEDIALOGUES(3) 673
bodies are said to exist in a place, or a seal to make an impression upon wax. My
meaning is only that the mind comprehends or perceives them; and that it is affected
from without, or by some being distinct from itself. This is my explication of your dif-
ficulty; and how it can serve to make your tenet of an unperceiving material substratum
intelligible, I would fain know.
HYLAS: Nay, if that be all, I confess I do not see what use can be made of it. But
are you not guilty of some abuse of language in this?
PHILONOUS: None at all. It is no more than common custom, which you know is the
rule of language, hath authorised: nothing being more usual, than for philosophers to
speak of the immediate objects of the understanding as things existing in the mind. Nor
is there anything in this but what is conformable to the general analogy of language;
most part of the mental operations being signified by words borrowed from sensible
things; as is plain in the terms comprehend, reflect, discourse,etc., which, being applied
to the mind, must not be taken in their gross, original sense.
HYLAS: You have, I own, satisfied me in this point. But there still remains one
great difficulty, which I know not how you will get over. And, indeed, it is of such
importance that if you could solve all others, without being able to find a solution for
this, you must never expect to make me a proselyte to your principles.
PHILONOUS: Let me know this mighty difficulty.
HYLAS: The Scripture account of the creation is what appears to me utterly irrecon-
cilable with your notions. Moses tells us of a creation: a creation of what? Of ideas? No,
certainly, but of things, of real things, solid corporeal substances. Bring your principles
to agree with this, and I shall perhaps agree with you.
PHILONOUS: Moses mentions the sun, moon, and stars, earth and sea, plants and
animals. That all these do really exist, and were in the beginning created by God, I make
no question. If by ideasyou mean fictions and fancies of the mind, then these are no
ideas. If by ideasyou mean immediate objects of the understanding, or sensible things,
which cannot exist unperceived, or out of a mind, then these things are ideas. But
whether you do or do not call them ideas,it matters little. The difference is only about a
name. And, whether that name be retained or rejected, the sense, the truth, and reality of
things continues the same. In common talk, the objects of our senses are not termed
ideas,but things.Call them so still: provided you do not attribute to them any absolute
external existence, and I shall never quarrel with you for a word. The creation, there-
fore, I allow to have been a creation of things, of realthings. Neither is this in the least
inconsistent with my principles, as is evident from what I have now said; and would
have been evident to you without this, if you had not forgotten what had been so often
said before. But as for solid corporeal substances, I desire you to show where Moses
makes any mention of them; and, if they should be mentioned by him, or any other
inspired writer, it would still be incumbent on you to show those words were not taken
in the vulgar acceptation, for things falling under our senses, but in the philosophic
acceptation, for matter, or an unknown quiddity, with an absolute existence. When you
have proved these points, then (and not till then) may you bring the authority of Moses
into our dispute.
HYLAS: It is in vain to dispute about a point so clear. I am content to refer it to your
own conscience. Are you not satisfied there is some peculiar repugnancy between the
Mosaic account of the creation and your notions?
PHILONOUS: If all possible sense which can be put on the first chapter of Genesis
may be conceived as consistently with my principles as any other, then it has no peculiar
repugnancy with them. But there is no sense you may not as well conceive, believing as