668 GEORGEBERKELEY
PHILONOUS: You lay it down as a self-evident principle that the quantity of motion
in any body is proportional to the velocity and mattertaken together: and this is made
use of to prove a proposition from whence the existence of matteris inferred. Pray is
not this arguing in a circle?
HYLAS: In the premise I only mean that the motion is proportional to the velocity,
jointly with the extension and solidity.
PHILONOUS: But, allowing this to be true, yet it will not thence follow that gravity is
proportional to matter,in your philosophic sense of the word, except you take it for granted
that unknown substratum,or whatever else you call it, is proportional to those sensible
qualities; which to suppose is plainly begging the question. That there is magnitude and
solidity, or resistance, perceived by sense, I readily grant, as likewise, that gravity may be
proportional to those qualities I will not dispute. But that either these qualities as perceived
by us, or the powers producing them, do exist in a material substratum;this is what I deny,
and you indeed affirm, but, notwithstanding your demonstration, have not yet proved.
HYLAS: I shall insist no longer on that point. Do you think, however, you shall
persuade me the natural philosophers have been dreaming all this while? Pray what
becomes of all their hypotheses and explications of the phenomena,which suppose the
existence of matter?
PHILONOUS: What mean you, Hylas, by the phenomena?
HYLAS: I mean the appearances which I perceive by my senses.
PHILONOUS: And the appearances perceived by sense, are they not ideas?
HYLAS: I have told you so a hundred times.
PHILONOUS: Therefore, to explain the phenomena, is, to show how we come to be
affected with ideas, in that manner and order wherein they are imprinted on our senses.
Is it not?
HYLAS: It is.
PHILONOUS: Now, if you can prove that any philosopher has explained the produc-
tion of any one idea in our minds by the help of matter,I shall for ever acquiesce, and
look on all that hath been said against it as nothing; but, if you cannot, it is vain to urge
the explication of phenomena.That a being endowed with knowledge and will should
produce or exhibit ideas is easily understood. But that a being which is utterly destitute
of these faculties should be able to produce ideas, or in any sort to affect an intelligence,
this I can never understand. This I say, though we had some positive conception of
matter, though we knew its qualities, and could comprehend its existence, would yet be
so far from explaining things, that it is itself the most inexplicable thing in the world.
And yet, for all this, it will not follow that philosophers have been doing nothing; for,
by observing and reasoning upon the connexion of ideas, they discover the laws and
methods of nature, which is a part of knowledge both useful and entertaining.
HYLAS: After all, can it be supposed God would deceive all mankind? Do you
imagine he would have induced the whole world to believe the being of matter, if there
was no such thing?
PHILONOUS: That every epidemical opinion, arising from prejudice, or passion, or
thoughtlessness, may be imputed to God, as the author of it, I believe you will not
affirm. Whatsoever opinion we father on him, it must be either because he has discov-
ered it to us by supernatural revelation; or because it is so evident to our natural facul-
ties, which were framed and given us by God, that it is impossible we should withhold
our assent from it. But where is the revelation? Or where is the evidence that extorts the
belief of matter? Nay, how does it appear, that matter, taken for something distinct from
what we perceive by our senses, is thought to exist by all mankind; or indeed, by any