680 GEORGEBERKELEY
sensible, substance, body, stuff,and the like, are retained, the word mattershould be
never missed in common talk. And in philosophical discourses it seems the best way to
leave it quite out: since there is not, perhaps, any one thing that hath more favoured and
strengthened the depraved bent of the mind towards Atheism than the use of that general
confused term.
HYLAS: Well but, Philonous, since I am content to give up the notion of an
unthinking substance exterior to the mind, I think you ought not to deny me the privi-
lege of using the word matteras I please, and annexing it to a collection of sensible
qualities subsisting only in the mind. I freely own there is no other substance, in a strict
sense, than spirit.But I have been so long accustomed to the term matterthat I know not
how to part with it: to say, there is no matter in the world, is still shocking to me.
Whereas to say, there is no matter,if by that term be meant an unthinking substance
existing without the mind; but if by matter is meant some sensible thing, whose exis-
tence consists in being perceived, then there is matter: this distinction gives it quite
another turn; and men will come into your notions with small difficulty, when they are
proposed in that manner. For, after all, the controversy about matterin the strict accep-
tation of it, lies altogether between you and the philosophers: whose principles,
I acknowledge, are not near so natural, or so agreeable to the common sense of
mankind, and Holy Scripture, as yours. There is nothing we either desire or shun but as
it makes, or is apprehended to make, some part of our happiness or misery. But what has
happiness or misery, joy or grief, pleasure or pain, to do with absolute existence; or with
unknown entities, abstracted from all relation to us? It is evident, things regard us only
as they are pleasing or displeasing: and they can please or displease only so far forth as
they are perceived. Farther, therefore, we are not concerned, and thus far you leave
things as you found them. Yet still there is something new in this doctrine. It is plain,
I do not now think with the philosophers; nor yet altogether with the vulgar. I would
know how the case stands in that respect; precisely, what you have added to, or altered
in my former notions.
PHILONOUS: I do not pretend to be a setter-up of new notions. My endeavours
tend only to unite, and place in a clearer light, that truth which was before shared
between the vulgar and the philosophers:—the former being of opinion, that those
things they immediately perceive are the real things;and the latter, that the things
immediately perceived are ideas, which exist only in the mind.Which two notions put
together, do, in effect, constitute the substance of what I advance.
HYLAS: I have been a long time distrusting my senses: methought I saw things by
a dim light and through false glasses. Now the glasses are removed and a new light
breaks in upon my understanding. I am clearly convinced that I see things in their native
forms, and am no longer in pain about their unknown naturesor absolute existence.This
is the state I find myself in at present; though, indeed, the course that brought me to it
I do not yet thoroughly comprehend. You set out upon the same principles that
Academics, Cartesians, and the like sects usually do; and for a long time it looked as if
you were advancing their philosophical scepticism:but, in the end, your conclusions are
directly opposite to theirs.
PHILONOUS: You see, Hylas, the water of yonder fountain, how it is forced
upwards, in a round column, to a certain height; at which it breaks, and falls back into
the basin from whence it rose: its ascent, as well as descent, proceeding from the same
uniform law or principle of gravitation.Just so, the same principles which, at first view,
lead to scepticism,pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.