 Section 4 of Three Dialogues between Hylis and Philonus. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jeffrey Edwards. Three Dialogues between Hylis and Philonus in opposition to skeptics and atheists by George Barkley. Section 4. The Second Dialogue. Hyl, I beg your pardon, Philonus, for not meeting you sooner. All this morning my head was so filled with our late conversation that I had not leisure to think of the time of the day, or indeed of anything else. Philonus, I am glad you were so intent upon it. I hope if there were any mistakes in your concessions or fallacies in my reasonings from them, you will now discover them to me. Hyl, I assure you I have done nothing ever since I saw you, but search after mistakes and fallacies, and, with that view, have minutely examined the whole series of yesterday's discourse. But all in vain. For the notions it led me into, upon review, appear still more clear and evident. And the more I consider them, the more irresistibly do they force my assent. Phil, it is not this, thank you, a sign that they are genuine, that they proceed from nature, and are conformable to right reason. Truth and beauty are in this alike, that the strictest survey sets them both off to advantage, while the false luster of error and disguise cannot endure being reviewed or too nearly inspected. Hyl, I own there is a great deal in what you say, nor can anyone be more entirely satisfied of the truth of those odd consequences, so long as I have in view the reasonings that lead to them. But, when these are out of my thoughts, there seems, on the other hand, something so satisfactory, so natural and intelligible in the modern way of explaining things that, I profess, I know not how to reject it. Phil, I know not what way you mean. Hyl, I mean the way of accounting for our sensations or ideas. Phil, how is that? Hyl, it is supposed the soul makes her residence in some part of the brain, from which the nerves take their rise, and are since extended to all parts of the body, and that outward objects, by the different impressions they make on the organs of sense, communicate certain vibrative motions to the nerves, and these, being filled with spirits, propagate them to the brain or seat of the soul, which, according to the various impressions or traces thereby made in the brain, is variously affected with ideas. Phil, and call you this an explication of the manner whereby we are affected with ideas? Hyl, why not, Philanus, have you anything to object against it? Phil, I would first know whether I rightly understand your hypothesis. You make certain traces in the brain to be the causes or occasions of our ideas. Pray tell me whether by the brain you mean any sensible thing. Hyl, what else think you I could mean? Phil, sensible things are all immediately perceivable, and those things which are immediately perceivable are ideas, and these exist only in the mind. Less much you have, if I mistake not, long since agreed to. Hyl, I do not deny it. Phil, the brain therefore you speak of, being a sensible thing, exists only in the mind. Now, I would faint know whether you think it reasonable to suppose that one idea or thing existing in the mind occasions all other ideas, and, if you think so, pray how do you account for the origin of that primary idea or brain itself? Hyl, I do not explain the origin of our ideas by that brain which is perceivable to sense, this being itself only a combination of sensible ideas, but by another which I imagine. Phil, but are not things imagined as truly in the mind as things perceived? Hyl, I must confess they are. Phil, it comes therefore to the same thing, and you have been all this while accounting for ideas by certain motions or impressions of the brain, that is, by some alterations in an idea, whether sensible or imaginable it matters not. Hyl, I begin to suspect my hypothesis. Phil, besides spirits, all that we know or conceive are our own ideas, when, therefore, you say all ideas are occasioned by impressions in the brain, do you conceive this brain or no? If you do, then you talk of ideas imprinted in an idea causing that same idea, which is absurd. If you do not conceive it, you talk unintelligibly, instead of forming a reasonable hypothesis. Hyl, I now clearly see it was a mere dream, there is nothing in it. Phil, you need not be much concerned at it, for after all, this way of explaining things, as you called it, could never have satisfied any reasonable man. What connection is there between a motion in the nerves and the sensations of sound or colour in the mind? Or how is it possible these should be the effect of that? Hyl, but I could never think it had so little in it as now it seems to have. Phil, well then, are you at length satisfied that no sensible things have a real existence, and that you are in truth an errant sceptic? Hyl, it is too plain to be denied. Phil, look, are not the fields covered with a delightful verger? Is there not something in the woods and groves, in the rivers and clear springs, that soothes, that delights, that transports the soul? At the prospect of the wide and deep ocean, or some huge mountain whose top is lost in the clouds, or of an old gloomy forest, are not our minds filled with a pleasing horror? Even in rocks and deserts is there not an agreeable wildness? How sincere a pleasure is it to behold the natural beauties of the earth, to preserve and renew our relish for them? Is not the veil of night alternately drawn over her face, and doth she not change her dress with the seasons? How aptly are the elements disposed? What variety and use in the meanest productions of nature? What delicacy, what beauty, what contrivance, in animal and vegetable bodies? How exquisitely are all things suited, as well to their particular ends, as to constitute opposite parts of the whole? And, while they mutually aid and support, do they not also set off and illustrate each other? Raise now your thoughts from this ball of earth to all those glorious luminaries that adorn the high arch of heaven. The motion and situation of the planets, are they not admirable for use and order? Were those bracket miscalled erratic, close bracket globes, once known to stray, in their repeated journeys through the pathless void? Do they not measure areas round the sun ever proportioned to the times? So fixed, so immutable are the laws by which the unseen author of nature actuates the universe. How vivid and radiant is the luster of the fixed stars. How magnificent and rich, that negligent profusion with which they appear to be scattered throughout the whole azure vault. Yet, if you take the telescope, it brings into your sight a new host of stars that escape the naked eye. Here they seem contiguous and minute, but, to a nearer view, immense orbs of light at various distances far sunk in the abyss of space. Now you must call imagination to your aid. The feeble narrow sense cannot describe innumerable worlds revolving around the central fires, and, in those worlds, the energy of an all-perfect mind displayed in endless forms. But, neither sense nor imagination are big enough to comprehend the boundless extent with all its glittering furniture. Though the laboring mind exert and strain each power to its utmost reach, there still stands out ungrasped, a surplusage, immeasurable. Yet, all the vast bodies that compose this mighty frame, how distant and remote so ever, are by some secret mechanism, divine art and force, linked in a mutual dependence and intercourse with each other. Even with this earth, which was almost slipped from my thoughts and lost in the crowd of worlds, is not the whole system immense, beautiful, glorious beyond expression and beyond thought. What treatment, then, do those philosophers deserve who would deprive these noble and delightful scenes of all reality? How should those principles be entertained that lead us to think all the visible beauty of the creation a false imaginary glare? To be plain, can you expect this skepticism of yours will not be thought extravagantly absurd by all men of sense? Hyl, other men may think as they please, but for your part you have nothing to reproach me with. My comfort is you are as much as skeptic as I am. Phil, there, Hylis, I must beg leave to differ from you. Hyl, what? Have you all along agreed to the premises, and do you now deny the conclusion and leave me to maintain those paradoxes by myself which you led me into? This surely is not fair. Phil, I deny that I agreed with you in those notions that led to skepticism. You indeed said the reality of sensible things consisted in an absolute existence out of the minds of spirits, or distinct from their being perceived, and pursuant to this notion of reality you are obliged to deny sensible things any real existence, that is, according to your own definition, you profess yourself as skeptic, but I neither said nor thought the reality of sensible things was to be defined after that manner. To me it is evident, for the reasons you allow of, that sensible things cannot exist otherwise than in a mind or spirit. Once I conclude, not that they have no real existence, but that, seeing they depend not on my thought, and have all existence distinct from being perceived by me, there must be some other mind wherein they exist. As sure, therefore, as a sensible world really exists, so sure is there an infinite, omnipresent spirit who contains and supports it. Heil. What? This is no more than I and all Christians hold, nay, and all others who believe there is a God, and that he knows and comprehends all things. Phil, I, but here lies the difference. Men commonly believe that all things are known or perceived by God, because they believe the being of a God, whereas I, on the other side, immediately and necessarily conclude the being of a God, because all sensible things must be perceived by him. Heil. But so long as we all believe the same thing, what matter is it how we come by that belief? Phil. But neither do we agree in the same opinion. For philosophers, though they acknowledge all corporeal beings to be perceived by God, yet they attribute to them an absolute subsistence distinct from their being perceived by any mind whatever, which I do not. Besides, is there no difference between saying there is a God, therefore he perceives all things, and saying, sensible things do really exist, and, if they really exist, they are necessarily perceived by an infinite mind, therefore there is an infinite mind or God? This furnishes you with a direct and immediate demonstration from a most evident principle of the being of a God. Devines and philosophers had proved beyond all controversy from the beauty and usefulness of the several parts of the creation, that it was the workmanship of God. But that, setting aside all help of astronomy and natural philosophy, all contemplation of the contrivance, order, and adjustment of things, an infinite mind should be necessarily inferred from the bare existence of the sensible world, is an advantage to them only who have made this easy reflection. That the sensible world is that which we perceive by our several senses, and that nothing is perceived by the senses beside ideas, and that no idea or archetype of an idea can exist otherwise than in a mind. You may now, without any laborious search into the sciences, without any subtlety of reason, or tedious length of discourse, oppose and baffle the most strenuous advocate for atheism, those miserable refuges, whether in an internal succession of unthinking causes and effects, or in a fortuitous concourse of atoms, those wild imaginations of Vanini, Hobbes, and Spinoza. In a word, the whole system of atheism is it not entirely overthrown by the single reflection on the repugnancy included in supposing the whole, or any part, even the most rude and shapeless of the visible world, to exist without a mind? Let any one of those abitors of impiety but look into his own thoughts and there try if he can conceive how so much as a rock, a desert, a chaos, or confused jumble of atoms, how anything at all, either sensible or imaginable, can exist independent of a mind, and he need go no farther to be convinced of his folly. Can anything be fair then to put a dispute on such an issue? And leave it to a man himself to see if he can conceive, even in thought, what he holds to be true in fact, and from a notional to allow it a real existence? Heil, it cannot be denied there is something highly serviceable to religion in what you advance, but do you not think it looks very like a notion entertained by some eminent moderns of seeing all things in God? Phil, I would gladly know that opinion. Pray explain it to me. Heil, they conceive that the soul, being immaterial, is incapable of being united with material things, so as to perceive them in themselves, but that she perceives them by her union with the substance of God, which, being spiritual, is therefore purely intelligible or capable of being the immediate object of a spirit's thought. Besides, the divine essence contains in it perfection's correspondent to each created being, and which are, for that reason, proper to exhibit or represent them to the mind. Phil, I do not understand how our ideas, which are things altogether passive and inert, can be the essence, or any part, bracket, or like any part, close bracket, of the essence or substance of God, who is an impassive, indivisible, pure, active being. Many more difficulties and objections there are which occur at first view against this hypothesis, but I shall only add that it is liable to all the absurdities of the common hypothesis in making a created world exist otherwise than in the mind of a spirit. Besides all which, it hath this peculiar to itself, that it makes that material world serve to no purpose, and if it pass for a good argument against other hypotheses in the sciences, that they suppose nature, or the divine wisdom, to make something in vain, or do that by tedious, roundabout methods which might have been performed in a much more easy and compendious way, what shall we think of that hypothesis which supposes the whole world made in vain? How? But what say you? Are not you too of opinion that we see all things in God? If I mistake not, what do you advance comes near it? Phil. Few men think. Yet all have opinions. Hence, men's opinions are superficial and confused. It is nothing strange that tenets which in themselves are ever so different should nevertheless be confounded with each other by those who do not consider them attentively. I shall not therefore be surprised if some men imagine that I run into the enthusiasm of Malbranche, though in truth I am very remote from it. He builds on the most abstract general ideas which I entirely disclaim. He asserts an absolute external world which I deny. He maintains that we are deceived by our senses, and, though not the real natures, or the true forms and figures of extended beings, of all which I hold the direct contrary, so that upon the whole there is no principles more fundamentally opposite than his and mine. It must be owned that I entirely agree with what the Holy Scripture sayeth, quote, that in God we live and move and have our being, but that we see things in his essence. After the manner above set forth, I am far from believing. Take here in brief my meaning. It is evident that the things I perceive are my own ideas, and that no idea can exist unless it be in a mind. Nor is it less plain that these ideas or things by me perceived, either themselves or their archetypes, exist independently of my mind, since I know myself not to be their author, it being out of my power to determine at pleasure what particular ideas I shall be affected with upon opening my eyes or ears. They must, therefore, exist in some other mind, whose will it is they should be exhibited to me. The things I say, immediately perceived, are ideas or sensations. Call them which you will. But how can any idea or sensation exist in or be produced by anything but a mind or spirit? This, indeed, is inconceivable, and to assert that which is inconceivable is to talk nonsense. Is it not? Hile, without doubt. Fill. But, on the other hand, it is very conceivable that they should exist in and be produced by a spirit, since this is no more than I daily experience in myself. Inasmuch as I perceive numberless ideas and, by an act of my will, can form a great variety of them, and raise them up in my imagination. Though it must be confessed, these creatures of the fancy are not altogether so distinct, so strong, vivid, and permanent, as those perceived by my senses, which latter are called red things. From all which I conclude, there is a mind which affects me every moment with all the sensible impressions I perceive, and, from the variety, order, and manner of these, I conclude the author of them to be wise, powerful, and good, beyond comprehension. Mark it well. I do not say I see things by perceiving that which represents them in the intelligible substance of God. This I do not understand. But I say the things by me perceived are known by the understanding, and produced by the will of an infinite spirit. It is not all this most plain and evident. Is there any more in it than what a little observation in our own minds and that which passeth in them not only enables us to conceive, but also obliges us to acknowledge? Hile. I think I understand you very clearly. And own the proof you give of a deity seems no less evident than it is surprising, but allowing that God is the supreme and universal cause of all things, yet may there not be still a third nature besides spirits and ideas? May we not admit a subordinate and limited cause of our ideas? In a word, may there not for all that be matter? Hile. How often must I inculcate the same thing? You allow the things immediately perceived by sense to exist nowhere without the mind. But there is nothing perceived by sense which is not perceived immediately. Therefore there is nothing sensible that exists without the mind. The matter, therefore, which you still insist on, is something intelligible, I suppose, something that may be discovered by reason and not by sense. Hile. You are in the right. Phil, pray let me know what reasoning your belief of matter is grounded on and what this matter is in your present sense of it. Hile. I find myself affected with various ideas whereof I know I am not the cause. Neither are they the cause of themselves or of one another or capable of subsisting by themselves as being altogether inactive, fleeting, dependent beings. They have, therefore, some cause distinct from me and them, of which I pretend to know no more than that it is the cause of my ideas. This thing, whatever it be, I call matter. Phil, tell me, Hiles, has everyone a liberty to change the current proper signification attached to a common name in any language? For example, suppose a traveler should tell you that in a certain country men pass unheard through the fire, and upon explaining himself you found he meant by the word fire that which others call water, or if he should assert that there are trees that walk upon two legs, meaning men by the term trees. Would you think this reasonable? Hile. No, I should think it very absurd. Common custom is the standard of propriety in language, and for any man to affect speaking improperly is to pervert the use of speech, and can never serve to a better purpose than to protract and multiply disputes, where there is no difference in opinion. Phil, and does not matter, in the common current acceptation of the word, signify an extended, solid, movable, unthinking, inactive substance? Hile, it doth. Phil, and hath it not been made evident that no such substance can possibly exist, and though it should be allowed to exist, yet how can that which is inactive be a cause, or that which is unthinking be a cause of thought? You may indeed, if you please, annex to the word matter a contrary meaning to what is vulgarly received, and tell me you understand by it an unextended thinking active being which is the cause of our ideas. But what else is this than to play with words, born into the very fault you just now condemned with so much reason? I do by no means find fault with your reasoning in that you collect a cause from the phenomena, but I deny that the cause deducible by reason can properly be termed matter. Hile, there is indeed something in what you say, but I am afraid you do not thoroughly comprehend my meaning. I would by no means be thought to deny that God, or an infinite spirit, is the supreme cause of all things. All I contend for is that, subordinate to the supreme agent, there is a cause of a limited and inferior nature which concurs in the production of our ideas, not by any act of will or spiritual efficiency, but by that kind of action which belongs to matter. Viz motion. Phil, I find you are at every turn relapsing into your old exploded conceit of a movable and consequently an extended substance existing without the mind. What, have you already forgotten you are convinced, or are you willing I should repeat what has been said on that head? In truth this is not fair dealing in you, still to suppose the being of that which you have so often acknowledged to have no being, but not to insist further on what has been so largely handled, I ask whether all your ideas are not perfectly passive and inert, including nothing of action in them. Heil, they are. Phil, and are sensible qualities anything else but ideas? Heil, how often have I acknowledged that they are not? Phil, but is not motion a sensible quality? Heil, it is. Phil, consequently it is no action? Heil, I agree with you and indeed it is very plain that when I stir my finger it remains passive, but my will which produced the motion is active. Phil, now I desire to know, in the first place, whether motion being allowed to be no action, you can conceive any action besides volition, and in the second place, whether to say something and conceive nothing be not to talk nonsense, and lastly, whether having considered the premises you do not perceive that to suppose any efficient or active cause of our ideas other than spirit is highly absurd and unreasonable. Heil, I give up the point entirely, but the matter may not be a cause, yet what hinders its being an instrument, subservient to the supreme agent in the production of our ideas? Phil, an instrument say you, pray what may be the figure, springs, wheels, and motions of that instrument. Heil, those I pretend to determine nothing of, both the substance and its qualities, being entirely unknown to me. Phil, what? You are then of opinion, it is made up of unknown parts, that it hath unknown motions and an unknown shape? Heil, I do not believe that it hath any figure or motion at all, being already convinced that no sensible qualities can exist in an unperceiving substance. Phil, but what notion is it possible to frame of an instrument void of all sensible qualities, even extension itself? Heil, I do not pretend to have any notion of it. Phil, and what reason have you to think this unknown, this inconceivable somewhat, doth exist? Is it that you imagine God cannot act as well without it, or that you find by experience the use of some such thing when you form ideas in your own mind? Heil, you are always teasing me for reasons of my belief. Pray, what reasons have you not to believe it? Phil, it is to me a sufficient reason not to believe the existence of anything, if I see no reason for believing it. But, not to insist on reasons for believing, you will not so much as let me know what it is you would have me believe, since you say you have no manner of notion of it. After all, let me entreat you to consider whether it be like a philosopher, or even like a man of common sense, to pretend to believe you know not what and you know not why. Heil, hold, Philonous, when I tell you matter is an instrument, I do not mean altogether nothing. It is true I know not the particular kind of instrument, but, however, I have some notion of instrument in general, which I apply to it. Phil, but what if it should prove that there is something, even in the most general notion of instrument, as taken in a distinct sense from cause, which makes the use of it inconsistent with the divine attributes? Heil, make that appear, and I shall give up the point. Phil, what mean you by general nature, or notion of instrument? Heil, that which is common to all particular instruments, composes the general notion. Phil, is it not common to all instruments that they are applied to the doing those things only, which cannot be performed by the mere act of our wills? Thus, for instance, I never use an instrument to move my finger, because it is done by evolution, but I should use one if I were to remove part of a rock, or tear up a tree by the roots. Are you of the same mind, or can you show me any example where an instrument is made use of in producing an effect immediately, depending on the will of the agent? Heil, I own, I cannot. Phil, how therefore can you suppose that an all-perfect spirit, on whose will all things have an absolute and immediate dependence, should need an instrument in this operation, or, not needing it, make use of it? Thus it seems to me that you are obliged to own the use of a lifeless inactive instrument to be incompatible with the infinite perfection of God. That is, by your own confession, to give up the point. Heil, it does not readily occur what I can answer you. Phil, but, me thinks, you should be ready to own the truth when it has been fairly proved to you. We indeed, who are beings of finite powers, are forced to make use of instruments, and the use of an instrument showeth the agent to be limited by rules of another's prescription, and that he cannot obtain his ends but in such a way, and by such conditions. Whence it seems a clear consequence that the supreme unlimited agent uses no tool or instrument at all. The will of an omnipotent spirit is no sooner exerted than executed without the application of means, which, if they are employed by inferior agents, it is not upon account of any real efficacy that is in them, or necessary aptitude to produce any effect, but merely in compliance with the laws of nature, or those conditions prescribed to them by the first cause, who is himself above all imitation or prescription whatsoever. Heil, I will no longer maintain that matter is an instrument. However, I would not be understood to give up its existence, neither, since, notwithstanding what has been said, it may still be an occasion. Phil, how many shapes is your matter to take, or how often must it be proved not to exist, before you are content to part with it? But to say no more of this, bracket, though by all the laws of disputation I may justly blame you for so frequently changing the signification of the principal term, close bracket, I would feign know what you mean by affirming that matter is an occasion, having already denied it to be a cause, and, when you have shown in what sense you understand occasion, pray, in the next place, be pleased to show me what reason induceeth you to believe there is such an occasion of our ideas. Heil, as to the first point, by occasion I mean an inactive unthinking being, at the presence whereof God excites ideas in our minds. Phil, and what may be the nature of that inactive unthinking being? Heil, I know nothing of its nature. Phil, proceed then to the second point, and assign some reason why we should allow an existence to this inactive unthinking unknown thing. Heil, when we see ideas produced in our minds, after an orderly and constant manner, it is natural to think they have some fixed and regular occasions, at the presence of which they are excited. Phil, you acknowledge then God alone to be the cause of our ideas, and that he causes them at the presence of those occasions. Heil, that is my opinion. Phil, those things which you say are present to God, without doubt he perceives? Heil, certainly, otherwise they could not be to him an occasion of acting. Phil, not to insist now on your making sense of this hypothesis, or answering all the puzzling questions and difficulties it is liable to, I only ask whether the order and regularity observable in the series of our ideas, or the course of nature be not sufficiently accounted for by the wisdom and power of God, and whether it does not derogate from those attributes to suppose he is influenced, directed, or put in mind when and what he is to act, by an unthinking substance, and lastly whether, in case I granted all you contended for, it would make anything to your purpose, it not being easy to conceive how the external or absolute existence of an unthinking substance distinct from its being perceived can be inferred from my allowing that there are certain things perceived by the mind of God, which are to him the occasion of producing ideas in us. Heil, I am perfectly at a loss what to think, this notion of occasion seeming now altogether as groundless as the rest. Phil, do you not at length perceive that in all these different acceptations of matter you have been only supposing you know not what, for no manner of reason and to no kind of use? Heil, I freely own myself less fond of my notions since they have been so accurately examined, but still, me thinks, I have some confused perception that there is such a thing as matter. Phil, either you perceive the being of matter immediately or immediately. If immediately pray inform me by which of the senses you perceive it. If immediately let me know by what reasoning it is inferred from those things which you perceive immediately. So much for the perception. Then, for the matter itself, I ask whether it is object, substratum, cause, instrument, or occasion. You have already pleaded for each of these, shifting your notions and making matter to appear sometimes in one shape then in another, and what you have offered has been disapproved and rejected by yourself. If you have anything new to advance I would gladly bear it. Heil, I think I have already offered all I had to say on those heads I am at a loss what more to urge. Phil, and yet you are loathed apart with your old prejudice, but to make you quit it more easily I desire that, beside what has been hitherto suggested you will farther consider whether, upon supposition that matter exists you can possibly conceive how you should be affected by it, or supposing it did not exist, whether it be not evident you might for all that be affected with the same ideas you now are, and consequently you have the very same reasons to believe its existence that you now can have. Heil, I acknowledge it is possible we might perceive all things just as we do now, though there was no matter in the world. Neither can I conceive if there be matter how it should produce any idea in our minds, and I do farther grant you have entirely satisfied me that it is impossible there should be such a thing as matter in any of the foregoing acceptations, but still I cannot help supposing that there is matter in some sense for other, what that is I do not indeed pretend to determine. Phil, I do not expect you should define exactly in the nature of that unknown being only be pleased to tell me whether it is a substance and if so whether you can suppose a substance without accidents or in case you suppose it to have accidents or qualities, I desire you will let me know what those qualities are, at least what is meant by matter supporting them. Heil, we have already argued on those points. I have no more to say to them, but to prevent any further questions let me tell you I at present understand by matter neither substance nor accident, thinking nor extended being, neither cause instrument nor occasion, but something entirely unknown distinct from all these. Phil, it seems then you include in your present notion of matter nothing but the general abstract idea of entity. Heil, nothing else save only that I super add to this general idea the negation of all those particular things qualities or ideas that I perceive imagine or in any wise apprehend. Phil pray where do you suppose this unknown matter to exist? Heil, oh Philanus now you think you have entangled me for if I say it exists in place then you will infer that it exists in the mind, since it is agreed that place or extension exists only in the mind but I am not ashamed to my own ignorance, I know not where it exists, only I am sure it exists not in place, there is a negative answer for you and you must expect no other to all the questions you put for the future about matter. Phil, since you will not tell me where it exists, you please to inform me after what manner you suppose it to exist, or what you mean by its existence. Heil, it neither thinks nor acts either perceives nor is perceived. Phil, but what is their positive in your abstract notion of its existence? Heil, upon a nice observation I do not find I have any positive notion or meaning at all I tell you again I am not ashamed to own my ignorance, I know not what is meant by its existence or how it exists. Phil, continue good Heilus to act the same ingenuous part and tell me sincerely whether you can frame a distinct idea of entity in general prescended from and exclusive of all thinking and corporeal beings, all particular things whatsoever. Heil, hold, let me think a little, I profess Philanus I do not find that I can at first glance we thought I had some dilute and airy notion of pure entity in abstract but upon closer attention it hath quite vanished out of sight the more I think on it the more am I confirmed in my prudent resolution of giving none but negative answers and not pretending to the least degree of any positive knowledge or conception of matter it's where, it's how, it's entity or anything belonging to it. Phil, when therefore you speak of the existence of matter you have not any notion in your mind? Heil, none at all. Phil, pray tell me if the case stands not thus, at first from a belief of material substance you would have it that the immediate objects existed without the mind then that they are archetypes then causes next instruments then occasions. Lastly something in general which being interpreted proves nothing so matter comes to nothing. What think you Heilus? Is not this a fair summary of your whole proceeding? Heil, be that as it will yet I still insist upon it that our not being able to conceive a thing is no argument against its existence. Phil, that from a cause direct, operation, sign or other circumstance there may reasonably be inferred the existence of a thing not immediately perceived and that it were absurd for any man to argue against the existence of that thing from his having no direct and positive notion of it I freely own but where there is nothing of all this where neither reason nor revelation induces us to believe the existence of a thing where we have not even a relative notion of it where abstraction is made from perceiving and being perceived from spirit and idea. Lastly where there is not so much as the most inadequate or faint idea pretended to I will not indeed thence conclude against the reality of any notion or existence of anything but my inference shall be that you mean nothing at all that you employ words to no manner of purpose without any design or signification whatsoever and I leave it to you to consider how mere jargon should be treated Heil, to deal frankly with you Vilanus, your arguments seem in themselves unanswerable but they have not so great an effect on me as to produce that entire conviction, that hearty acquiescence which attends demonstration. I find myself relapsing into an obscure surmise of I know not what matter. Phil, but are you not sensible, Heilus, that two things must concur to take away all scruple and work a plenary assent in the mind. Let a visible object be set in never so clear a light, yet if there is any imperfection in the sight or if the eye is not directed towards it, it will not be distinctly seen, and though a demonstration be never so well grounded and fairly proposed, yet if there is with all a stain of prejudice or a wrong bias on the understanding, can it be decided on a sudden to pursue clearly and adhere firmly to the truth? No, there is need of time and pains, the attention must be awakened and detained by a frequent repetition of the same thing placed oft in the same, oft in different lights. I have said it already and find I must still repeat and inculcate that it is an unaccountable license you take in pretending to maintain you know not what for you know not what reason or you know not what purpose. Can this be paralleled in any art or science, any sect or profession of men? Or is there anything so bare-facedly groundless and unreasonable to be met with even and the lowest of common conversation? But perhaps you will still say matter may exist, though at the same time you neither know what is meant by matter or by its existence. This indeed is surprising, and the more so because it is altogether voluntary and of your own head. You are not being led to it by any one reason for I challenge you to show me that thing in nature which needs matter to explain or account for it. Heil, the reality of things cannot be maintained without supposing the existence of matter. It is not this, think you, a good reason why I should be earnest in its defense? Phil, the reality of things? What things? Sensible or intelligible? Heil, sensible things. Phil, my glove for example? Heil, that or any other thing perceived by the senses? Phil, but to fix on some particular thing is it not a sufficient evidence to me of the existence of this glove that I see it and feel it and wear it? Or if this will not do, how is it possible I should be assured of the reality of this thing which I actually see in this place by supposing that some unknown thing which I never did or can see exists after an unknown manner in an unknown place or in no place at all? How can the supposed reality of that which is intangible be a proof that anything tangible really exists? Or of that which is invisible than any visible thing? Or in general of anything which is imperceptible that a perceptible exists? Do but explain this and I shall think nothing too hard for you. Heil, upon the whole I am content to own the existence of matter is highly improbable, but the direct and absolute impossibility of it does not appear to me. Phil, but granting matter to be possible, yet upon that account merely it can have no more claim to existence than a golden mountain or a centaur. Heil, I acknowledge it, but still you do not deny it is possible and that which is possible for ought you know may actually exist. Phil, 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? Heil, true, but that is only one sense of the term matter. Phil, but is it not the only proper genuine perceived 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 the other to a man who takes the liberty to unsettle and change the common signification of words? Heil, 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. Phil, 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 has not this shifting unfair method of yours spun out our dispute 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 anyone else understands it in? Heil, but I am not so thoroughly satisfied that you have proved the impossibility of matter in the last most obscure, abstracted and indefinite sense. Phil, when is a thing shown to be impossible? Heil, when a repugnancy is demonstrated between the ideas comprehended in its definition? Phil, but where there are no ideas, there no repugnancy can be demonstrated between ideas? Heil, I agree with you. Phil, 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 unknown sense, 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 it is. Heil, I acknowledge you have proved that matter is impossible nor do I see what more can be said in defense 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. In any 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. Phil, I will not fail to attend you. End of Section 4 and End of the Second Dialogue Recording by Geoffrey Edwards Section 5 of 3 dialogues between Heilis and Philonous This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Geoffrey Edwards 3 dialogues between Heilis and Philonous in opposition to skeptics and atheists by George Barkley Section 5 The Third Dialogue Philonous What are the fruits of yesterday's meditation? Has it confirmed you in the same mind you were in at parting? Or have you since seen cause to change your opinion? Heilis, truly my opinion is that all our opinions are alike vain and uncertain. What we approve today we condemn tomorrow. We keep a stir about knowledge and spend our lives in the pursuit of it when, alas, we know nothing all the while. Nor do I think it possible for us ever to know anything in this life. Our faculties are too narrow and too few. Nature certainly never intended us for speculation. Phil, what? Say you we can know nothing, Heilis? Heil, there's not that single thing in the world whereof we can know the real nature or what it is in itself. Phil, will you tell me I do not really know what fire or water is? Heil, you may indeed know that fire appears hot and water fluid, but this is no more than knowing what sensations are produced in your own mind upon the application of fire and water to your organs of sense, their internal constitution, their true and real nature, you are utterly in the dark as to that. Phil, do I not know what it is to be a real stone that I stand on, and that which I see before my eyes to be a real tree? Heil, no? No, it is impossible you or any man alive should know it. All you know is that you have such a certain idea or appearance in your own mind, but what is this to the real tree or stone? I tell you that color, figure, and hardness which you perceive are not the real natures of those things or in the least like them. The same may be said of all other real things or corporeal substances which compose the world. They have none of them, anything of themselves, like those sensible qualities by us perceived. We should not therefore pretend to affirm or know anything of them as they are in their own nature. Phil, but surely Heilus, I can distinguish gold for example from iron, and this be if I knew not what either truly was. Heil, believe me Philanus, you can only distinguish between your own ideas that yellowness, that weight, and other sensible qualities think you they are really in the gold? They are only relative to the senses and have no absolute existence in nature. And in pretending to distinguish the species of real things by the appearances in your mind you may perhaps act as wisely as he that should conclude two men were of a different species because their clothes were not of the same color. Phil, it seems then we are all together put off with the appearances of things and those false ones too. The very meat I eat and the cloth I wear have nothing in them like what I see and feel. Heil, even so. Phil, but is it not strange the whole world should be thus imposed on and so foolish as to believe their senses? And yet I know not how it is, but men eat and drink and sleep and perform all the offices of life as comfortably and conveniently as if they really knew the things they are conversant about. Heil, they do so, but you know ordinary practice does not require a nicety of speculative knowledge. Hence the vulgar retain their mistakes and for all that make a shift to bustle through the affairs of life but philosophers know better things. Phil, you mean they know that they know nothing? Heil, that is the very top and perfection of human knowledge. Phil, but are you all this while in earnest, Heilus, and are you seriously persuaded that you know nothing real in the world? Suppose you are going to write would you not call for a pen, ink, and paper like another man and do you not know what it is you call for? Heil, how often how often must I tell you that I know not the real nature of any one thing in the universe? I may indeed upon occasion make use of pen, ink, and paper but what any of them is in its own true nature I declare positively I know not and the same is true with regard to every other corporeal thing and what is more we are not only ignorant of the true and real nature of things but even of their existence it cannot be denied that we perceive experiences or ideas but it cannot be concluded from things that bodies really exist nay, now I think on it I must agreeably to my former concessions farther declare that it is impossible any real corporeal thing should exist in nature Phil, you amaze me was ever anything more wild and extravagant than the notions you now maintain and is it not evident you are led into all these extravagances of material substance? this makes you dream of those unknown natures in everything it is this occasions you are distinguishing between the reality and sensible appearances of things it is to this you are indebted for being ignorant of what everybody else knows perfectly well nor is this all you are not only ignorant of the true nature of everything but you know not whether anything really exists or whether there are any true natures at all for as much as you attribute to your material beings an absolute or external existence wherein you suppose their reality consists and as you are forced in the end to acknowledge such an existence means either a direct repugnancy or nothing at all it follows that you are obliged to pull down your own hypotheses of material substance and positively to deny the real existence of any part of the universe and so you are plunged into the deepest and most deplorable skepticism that ever man was idealist is it not as I say Heil I agree with you material substance was no more than unhypothesis and a false and groundless one too I will no longer spend my breath in defense of it but whatever hypothesis you advance or whatsoever scheme of things you introduce in it instead I doubt not it will appear every wit is false let me but be allowed to question you upon it that is suffer me to serve you in your own kind and I warrant it shall conduct you through as many perplexities and contradictions to the very same state of skepticism that I myself am in at present Phil I assure you Heilis I do not pretend to frame any hypothesis at all I am of a vulgar cast simply enough to believe my senses and leave things as I find them to be plain it is my opinion that the real things are those very things I see and feel and perceive by my senses these I know and finding they answer all the necessities and purposes of life have no reason to be solicitous about any other unknown beings a piece of sensible bread for instance would stay my stomach better than ten thousand times as much of that insensible unintelligible real bread you speak of it is likewise my opinion that colors and other sensible qualities are on the objects I cannot for my life help thinking that snow is white and fire hot you indeed who by snow and fire mean certain external unperceived unperceiving substances are in the right to deny whiteness or heat to be affections inherent in them but I who understand by those words the things I see and feel I'm obliged to think like other folks and as I am no skeptic with regard to the nature of things so neither am I as to their existence that a thing should be really perceived by my senses and at the same time not really exist is to me a plain contradiction since I cannot presend or abstract even in thought the existence of a sensible thing from its being perceived would stones fire water flesh iron and the like things which I name and discourse of are all things that I know and I should not have known them but that I perceive them by my senses and things perceived by the senses are immediately perceived and things immediately perceived are ideas and ideas cannot exist without the mind their existence therefore consists in being perceived when therefore they are actually perceived there can be no doubt of their existence away then with all that skepticism all those ridiculous philosophical doubts what a jest is it for a philosopher to question the existence of sensible things till he hath it proved to him from the veracity of God or to pretend our knowledge in this point falls short of intuition or demonstration I might as well doubt of my own being as of the being of those things I actually see and feel Hile not so fast Philanus you say you cannot conceive how sensible things should exist without the mind do you not Phil I do Hile supposing you were annihilated cannot you conceive it possible that things perceivable by sense may still exist Phil I can but then it must be in another mind when I deny sensible things and existence out of the mind I do not mean my mind in particular but all minds now it is plain to have an existence exterior to my mind since I find them by experience to be independent of it there is therefore some other mind wherein they exist during the intervals between the times of my perceiving them as likewise as I did before my birth and would do after my supposed annihilation and as the same as true with regard to all other finite created spirits it necessarily follows there is an omnipresent eternal mind which knows and comprehends all things and exhibits them to our view in such a manner and according to such rules as he himself hath ordained and are by us termed the laws of nature Hile answer me Philanus are all our ideas perfectly inert beings or have they any agency included in them Phil they are all together passive and inert Hile it is not God an agent a being purely active Phil I acknowledge it Hile no idea therefore can be like unto or represent the nature of God Phil it cannot Hile since therefore you have no idea of the mind of God how can you conceive possible that things should exist in his mind or if you can conceive the mind of God without having an idea of it why may not I be allowed to conceive the existence of matter not withstanding I have no idea of it Phil as to your first question I own I have properly no idea either of God or any other spirit for these being active cannot be represented by things perfectly inert as our ideas are I do nevertheless know that I who I am a spirit or thinking substance exist as certainly as I know my ideas exist farther I know what I mean by the terms I and myself and I know this immediately or intuitively though I do not perceive it as I perceive a triangle a color or a sound the mind spirit or soul is not indivisible an extended thing which thinks acts and perceives I say indivisible because an extended an extended because extended figured movable things are ideas and that which perceives ideas which thinks and wills is plainly itself no idea nor like an idea ideas are things inactive and perceived and spirits a sort of being altogether different from them I do not therefore say my soul is an idea or like an idea however taking the word idea in a large sense my soul may be said to furnish me with an idea that is an image or likeness of God though indeed extremely inadequate for all the notion I have of God is obtained by reflecting on my own soul heightening its powers and removing its imperfections I have therefore though not an inactive idea yet in myself some sort of an active thinking image of the deity and though I perceive him not by sense yet I have a notion of him or know him by reflection and reasoning my own mind and my own ideas I have an immediate knowledge of and by the help of these do immediately apprehend the possibility of the existence of other spirits and ideas farther from my own being and from the dependency I find in myself and my ideas I do by an active reason necessarily infer the existence of a God and of all created things in the mind of God so much for your first question for the second I suppose by this time you can answer it yourself for you neither perceive matter objectively as you do an inactive being or idea nor know it as you do yourself by a reflex act neither do you immediately apprehend it by similitude of the one or the other nor yet collected by reasoning from that which you know immediately all which makes the case of matter widely different from that of the deity Heil you say your own soul supplies you with some sort of an idea or image of God but at the same time you acknowledge you have properly speaking no idea of your own soul you even affirm that spirits are a sort of beings altogether different from ideas consequently that no idea can be like a spirit we have therefore no idea of any spirit nevertheless that there is spiritual substance although you have no idea of it while you deny there can be such a thing as material substance because you have no notion or idea of it is this fair dealing to act consistently you must either admit matter or reject spirit what say you to this Phil I say in the first place that I do not deny the existence of material substance merely because I have no notion of it but because the notion of it is inconsistent or in other words because it is repugnant that there should be a notion of it many things for what I know may exist where of neither I nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion whatsoever but then those things must be possible that is nothing inconsistent must be included in their definition I say secondly that although we believe things to exist we do not perceive yet we may not believe that any particular thing exists without some reason for such belief but I have no reason for believing the existence of matter I have no immediate intuition thereof neither can I immediately form my sensations ideas notions actions or passions infer an unthinking unperceiving inactive substance either by probable deduction or necessary consequence whereas the being of myself that is my own soul mind or thinking principle I evidently know by reflection you will forgive me if I repeat the same thing in answer to the same objections in the very notion or definition of material substance there is included a manifest repugnance and inconsistency but this cannot be said of the notion of spirit that idea should exist in what does not perceive or be produced by what does not act is repugnant but it is no repugnancy to say that a perceiving thing should be the subject of ideas or an active thing the cause of them it is granted we have neither an immediate evidence nor a demonstrative knowledge of the existence of other finite spirits but it will not sense follow that such spirits are on a foot with material substances if to suppose the one be inconsistent and it be not inconsistent perhaps the one can be inferred by no argument and there is a probability for the other if we see signs and effects indicating distinct finite agents like ourselves and see no sign or symptom whatever that leads to a rational belief of matter I say lastly that I have a notion of spirit though I have not strictly speaking an idea of it I do not perceive it as an idea or by means of an idea but know it by reflection Hile understanding all you have said to me it seems that according to your own way of thinking and in consequence of your own principles it should follow that you are only a system of floating ideas without any substance to support them words are not to be used without a meaning and as there is no more meaning in spiritual substance than in material substance the one is to be exploded as well as the other Hile often must I repeat that I know or am conscious of my own being and that I myself am not my ideas but somewhat else a thinking active principle that perceives nose wills and operates about ideas I know that I one in the same self perceive both colors and sounds that a color cannot perceive a sound nor I sound a color that I am therefore one individual principle distinct from color and sound and for the same reason from aft other sensible things and inert ideas but I am not in like manner conscious either of the existence or essence of matter on the contrary I know that nothing inconsistent can exist and that the existence of matter implies an inconsistency further I know what I mean when I affirm that there is a spiritual substance or supportive ideas that is that a spirit knows and perceives ideas but I do not know what is meant when it is said that an unperceiving substance hath inherent in it and supports either ideas or the archetypes of ideas there is therefore upon the whole no parity of case between spirit and matter how I own myself satisfied in this point but do you in earnest think the real existence of sensible things consists in there being actually perceived if so how comes it that all mankind distinguish between them ask the first man you meet and he shall tell you to be perceived is one thing and to exist is another fill I am content highless to appeal to the common sense of the world for the truth of my notion ask the gardener why he thinks yonder cherry tree exists in the garden and he shall tell you because he sees and feels it in a word because he perceives it by his senses ask him why he thinks an orange tree not to be there and he shall tell you because he does not perceive it what he perceives by sense that he terms a real being and sayeth it is or exists but that which is not perceivable the same he sayeth has no being yes fill in this I grant the existence of a sensible thing consists in being perceivable but not in being actually perceived fill and what is perceivable but an idea and can idea exist without being actually perceived these are points long since agreed between us how but be your opinion never so true yet surely you will not deny it is shocking and contrary to the common sense of men ask the fellow whether yonder tree hath an existence out of his mind what answer think you he would make fill the same that I should myself to it that it doth exist out of his mind but then to a Christian it cannot surely be shocking to say the real tree existing without his mind is truly known and comprehended by bracket that is exists in close bracket the infinite mind of God probably he may not at first glance be aware of the direct and immediate proof there is of this in as much as the very being of a tree or any other sensible thing implies a mind wherein it is but the point itself he cannot deny the question between the materialists and me is not whether things have a real existence out of the mind of this or that person but whether they have an absolute existence distinct from being perceived by God and exterior to all minds this indeed some heathens and philosophers have affirmed but whoever entertains notions of the deity suitable to the holy scriptures will be of another opinion but according to your notions what difference is there between real things and chimeras formed by the imagination or the visions of a dream since they are all equally in the mind fill the ideas formed by the imagination are faint and indistinct they have besides an entire dependence on the will but the idea is perceived by sense that is real things are more vivid and clear and being imprinted on the mind by a spirit distinct from us have not the like dependence on our will there is therefore no danger of confounding these with the foregoing and there is as little of confounding them with the visions of a dream which are dim irregular and confused and though they should happen to be never so lively and natural yet by their not being connected and of a peace with the preceding and subsequent transactions of our life they might easily be distinguished from realities in short by whatever method you distinguish things from chimeras on your scheme the same it is evident will hold also upon mine for it must be I presume by some perceived difference and I am not for depriving you one thing that you perceive how but still Philanus you hold there is nothing in the world but spirits and ideas and this you must needs acknowledge sounds very oddly Phil I own the word idea not being commonly used for thing sounds something out of the way my reason for using it was because unnecessary relation to the mind is understood to be implied by that term and it is now commonly by philosophers to denote the immediate objects of the understanding but however oddly the proposition may sound in words yet it includes nothing so very strange or shocking in its sense which in effect amounts to no more than this to it that there are only things perceiving and things perceived or that every unthinking being is necessarily and from the very nature of its existence perceived by some mind if not by a finite created mind yet certainly by the infinite mind of God in whom quote we live and move and have our being is this as strange as to say the sensible qualities are not on the objects or that we cannot be sure of the existence of things or know anything of their real natures though we both see and feel them and perceive them by all our senses and in consequence of this must we not think there are no such things as physical or corporeal causes but that a spirit is the immediate cause of all the phenomena in nature can there be anything more extravagant than this? Phil yes it is infinitely more extravagant to say a thing which is inert operates on the mind and which is unperceiving is the cause of our perceptions without any regard either to consistency or the old known axiom nothing can give to another that which it itself besides that which to you I know not for what reason seems so extravagant is no more than the holy scriptures assert in a hundred places in them God is represented as the soul and immediate author of all those effects which some heathens and philosophers are want to ascribe to nature matter fate or the like unthinking principle this is so much the constant language of scriptures that it were needless to confirm it by citations how? you are not aware Philanus that in making God the immediate author of all the motions in nature you make him the author of murder sacrilege, adultery, and the like heinous sins Phil in answer to that I observe first that the imputation of guilt is the same whether a person commits an action with or without an instrument in case therefore you suppose God to act by the mediation of an instrument or occasion called matter you as truly make him the author of sin as I who think him the immediate agent in all those operations vulgarly ascribe to nature I farther observe that sin or moral turpitude does not consist in the outward physical action or motion but in the internal deviation of the will from the laws of reason and religion this is plain in that the killing an enemy in a battle or putting a criminal legally to death is not thought sinful though the outward act be the very same with that in the case of murder since therefore sin does not consist in the physical action the making God an immediate cause of all such actions is not making him the author of sin lastly I have no where said that God is the only agent who produces all the motions in bodies it is true I have denied there are any other agents besides spirits but this is very consistent with allowing to thinking rational beings in the production of motions use of limited powers ultimately indeed drive from God but immediately under the direction of their own wills which is sufficient to entitle them to all the guilt of their actions how but the denying matter Philanus or corporeal substance there is the point you can never persuade me that this is not the universal sense of mankind were our dispute to be determined by most voices and confident you would give up the point without gathering the votes I wish both our opinions were fairly stated and submitted to the judgment of man who had plain common sense without the prejudices of a learned education let me be represented as one who trusts his senses who thinks he knows the things he sees and feels and entertains no doubts of their existence and you fairly set forth with all your doubts your paradoxes and your skepticism about you and I shall willingly acquiesce in the determination of any indifferent person that there is no substance wherein ideas can exist besides spirit is to me evident and that the objects immediately perceived our ideas is on all hands agreed and that sensible qualities are objects immediately perceived no one can deny it is therefore evident there can be no substratum of those qualities but spirit in which they exist not by way of mode or property but as a thing perceived in that which perceives it I deny therefore that there is any unthinking substratum of the objects of sense and in that acceptation that there is any material substance but if by material substance is meant only sensible body that which is seen and felt bracket and the unphilosophical part of the world I dare say mean no more close bracket then I am more certain of matters existence than you or any other philosopher pretend to be if there be anything which makes the generality of mankind averse from the notions I espouse it is a misapprehension that I deny the reality of sensible things but as it is you who are guilty of that and not I it follows that in truth their aversion is against your notions and not mine I do therefore assert that I am a certain as of my own being that there are bodies of corporeal substances bracket meaning the things I perceive by my senses close bracket and that granting this the bulk of mankind will take no thought about nor think themselves at all concerned in the fate of those unknown natures and philosophical quiddities which some men are so fond of Hile what say you to this since according to you men judge of the reality of things by their senses how can a man be mistaken in thinking the moon on a lucid surface about a foot in diameter or a square tower seen at a distance round or an oar with one end in the water crooked Phil he is not mistaken with regard to the ideas he actually perceives but in the inference he makes from his present perceptions thus in the case of the oar what he immediately perceives by sight is certainly crooked and so far he is in the right but if he then concludes or he shall perceive the same crookedness or that it would affect his touch as crooked things are want to do in that he is mistaken in like manner if he shall conclude from what he perceives in one station that in case he advances towards the moon or tower he should still be affected with the like ideas he is mistaken but his mistake lies not in what he perceives immediately and at present bracket it being a manifest contradiction to suppose he should err in respect to that close bracket but in the wrong judgment he makes concerning the ideas he apprehends to be connected with those immediately perceived or concerning the ideas that from what he perceives at present he imagines would be perceived in other circumstances the case is the same with regard to the Copernican system we do not here perceive any motion of the earth but it were erroneous then to conclude that in case we were placed at as great a distance from that now from the other planets we should not then perceive its motion Hile I understand you and must needs owned you say things plausible enough but give me leave to put you in mind of one thing pray Philanus were you not formerly as positive that matter existed as you are now that it does not Phil I was but here lies the difference before my positiveness was founded without examination upon prejudice but now after inquiry upon evidence Hile after all it seems our dispute is rather about words than things we agree in the thing but differ in the name that we are affected with ideas from without is evident and it is no less evident that there must be bracket I will not say archetypes but close bracket powers without the mind corresponding to those ideas and as these powers cannot subsist by themselves there is some subject of them necessarily to be admitted which I call matter and you call spirit this is all the difference Phil pray Hile is that powerful being or subject of powers extended Hile it has not extension but it has the power to raise in you the idea of extension Phil it is therefore itself an extended Hile I granted Phil is it not also active Hile without doubt otherwise would we attribute powers to it Phil now let me ask you two questions first whether it be agreeable to the usage either of philosophers or others to give the name matter to an an extended active being and secondly whether it be not ridiculously absurd to misapply names contrary to the common use of language Hile well then let it not be called matter since you will have it so but some third nature distinct from matter and spirit for what reason is there why you should call it spirit does not the notion of spirit imply that it is thinking as well as active and an extended Phil my reason is this because I have a mind to have some notion of meaning in what I say but I have no notion of any action distinct from volition neither can I conceive volition to be anywhere but in spirit therefore when I speak of an active being I am obliged to mean a spirit beside what can be planer than that a thing which has no ideas in itself cannot impart them to me and if it has ideas surely it must be a spirit to make you comprehend the points still more clearly if it be possible I assert as well as you that since we are affected from without we must allow powers to be without in a being distinct from ourselves so far we are agreed but then we differ as to the kind of this powerful being I will have it to be spirit matter or I know not what bracket I may add to you know not what close bracket thus I approve it to be spirit from the effects I see produced I conclude there are actions and because actions volitions and because there are volitions there must be a will again the things I perceive must have an existence they or their archetype out of my mind but being ideas neither they nor their archetypes can exist otherwise then in an understanding there is therefore an understanding but will and understanding constitute in the strictest sense a mind or spirit the powerful cause therefore of my ideas is in strict propriety of speech a spirit and now I warned you think you have made the point very clear little suspecting that what you advance leads directly to a contradiction is it not an absurdity to imagine any imperfection in God fill without doubt how to suffer pain is an imperfection fill it is how are we not sometimes affected with pain and then easiness by some other being fill we are how and have you not said that being is a spirit and it's not that spirit God fill I grant it how but you have asserted that whatever ideas we perceive from without are in the mind which affects us the ideas therefore of pain and an easiness are in God or in other words God suffers pain that is to say there is an imperfection in the divine nature which you acknowledge was absurd so you are caught in a plain contradiction fill that God knows or understands all things and that he knows among other things what pain is even every sort of painful sensation and what it is for these creatures to suffer pain I make no question but that God though he knows and sometimes causes painful sensations in us can himself suffer pain I positively deny we who are limited and dependent spirits are liable to impressions of sense the effects of an external agent which being produced against our wills are sometimes painful and uneasy but God whom no external being can affect perceives nothing sense as we do whose will is absolute and independent causing all things and liable to be thwarted or resisted by nothing it is evident such a being as this can suffer nothing nor be affected with any painful sensation or indeed any sensation at all we are chained to a body that is to say our perceptions are connected with corporeal motions by the law of our nature we are affected upon every alteration in the nervous parts of our sensible body which sensible body rightly considered is nothing but a complexion of such qualities or ideas as have no existence distinct from being perceived by a mind so that this connection of sensations with corporeal motions means no more than a correspondence in the order of nature between two sets of ideas or things immediately perceivable but God is a pure spirit disengaged from all such sympathy or natural ties so that the corporeal motions are attended with the sensations of pain or pleasure in his mind to know everything knowable is certainly a perfection but to endure or suffer or feel anything by sense is an imperfection the former I say agrees to God but not the latter God knows or hath ideas but his ideas are not conveyed to him by sense as ours are you are not distinguishing where there is none Heil but all this while you have not considered that the quantity of matter has been demonstrated to be proportioned to the gravity of bodies and what can withstand demonstration Phil let me see how you demonstrate that point Heil I lay it down for a principle that the moments or quantities of motion in bodies are in a direct compound reason of the velocities and quantities of matter contained in them hence where the velocities are equal it follows the moments are directly as the quantity of matter in each but it is found by experience that all bodies bracket bating the small inequalities arising from the resistance of the air close bracket descend with an equal velocity the motion therefore of descending bodies and consequently their gravity which is the cause or principle of that motion is proportional to the quantity of matter which was to be demonstrated Phil you lay it down as a self-evident principle that the quantity of motion in any body is proportional to the velocity and matter taken together and this is made use of to prove a proposition from whence the existence of matter is inferred prey is not this arguing in a circle Heil in the premise I only mean that the motion is proportional to the velocity jointly with the extension and solidity Phil this to be true yet it will not sense 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 dispute but that either these qualities as perceived by us or the powers producing them to exist in a material substratum this is what I deny and you indeed affirm but not withstanding your demonstration have not yet proved Heil I shall insist no longer on that point do you think however you shall persuade me that the natural philosophers have been dreaming all this while prey would be comes of all their hypotheses and explications of the phenomena which suppose the existence of matter what mean you Heilis by the phenomena Heil I mean the appearances which I perceive by the senses and the appearances perceived by sense are they not ideas Heil I have told you so a hundred times Phil 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 not Heil it is Phil now if you can prove that any philosopher has explained the production of any one idea in our minds by the help of matter I shall forever acquiesce and look on all that have been said against it as nothing but if you cannot it is vain to urge the explication of phenomena that a being endowed with the knowledge and will should produce or exhibit ideas is easily understood but that a being which is fully 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 connection of ideas they discover the laws and methods of nature which is a part of knowledge both useful and entertaining how 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 fill 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 discovered it to us by supernatural revelation or because it is so evident to our natural faculties which were framed and given us by God that it is impossible we should withhold our scent 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 except a few philosophers who do not know what they would be at your question supposes these points are clear and when you have cleared them I shall think myself obliged to give you another answer in the meantime let it suffice that I tell you I do not suppose God has deceived mankind at all but the novelty filliness the novelty there lies the danger new notions should always be discontentants they unsettle men's minds and nobody knows where they will end fill why the rejecting a notion that has no foundation either in sense or in reason or in divine authority should be thought to unsettle the belief of such opinions as are grounded on all or any of these I cannot imagine that innovations in government and religion are dangerous and ought to be discontentants I freely own but is there a like reason why they should be discouraged in philosophy the making anything known which was unknown before is an innovation in knowledge and if all such innovations had been forbidden men would not have made a notable progress in the arts and sciences but it is none of my business to plead for novelties and paradoxes that the qualities we perceive are not on the objects that we must not believe our senses that we know nothing of the real nature of things and can never be assured even of their existence that real colors and sounds are nothing but certain unknown figures and motions that motions are in themselves neither swift nor slow that there are in bodies absolute extensions without any particular magnitude or figure that a thing stupid thoughtless and inactive operates on a spirit that the least particle of a body contains innumerable extended parts these are the novelties and the strange notions which shock the genuine uncorrupted judgment of all mankind in being once admitted embarrass the mind with endless doubts and difficulties and it is against these and like innovations I endeavour to vindicate common sense it is true in doing this I may perhaps be obliged to use some embagies and ways of speech not common but if my notions are once thoroughly understood that which is most singular in them will in effect be found to amount to no more than this that it is absolutely impossible and a plain contradiction to suppose that any unthinking being should exist without being perceived by a mind and if this notion be singular it is a shame it should be so at this time of day and in a Christian country End of section 5 Recording by Jeffrey Edwards