been accused of sacrificing the substance to the shadow, and though he still continues to be charged, by every philosophical writer, with reducing all things to ideas in the mind, he was guilty of no such absurdity, at least when interpreted by the spirit, if not by the letter of his speculations. Nay, the very letter of his philosophy, in general, forestalls, and bears him up against, all the cavils of his opponents. His own words, in answer to these allegations, are the following. "No," says he, addressing his antagonist Hylas, who is advocating the common opinion of philosophers, and pressing against him the objections we have spoken of, "No, I am not for changing things into ideas, but rather ideas into things; since those immediate objects of perception, which, according to you, are only appearances of things, I take to be the real things themselves."
"Things!" rejoins Hylas; "you may pretend what you please; but it is certain you leave us nothing but the empty forms of things, the outside of which only strikes the senses."
"What you," answers Berkeley, "what you call the empty forms and outside of things, seem to me the very things themselves. . . . We both, therefore, agree in this, that we perceive only sensible forms; but herein we differ, you will have them to be empty appearances, I, real beings. In short, you do not trust your senses, I do."[1]
So far, then, there does not appear to be much
- ↑ Berkeley's Work; vol. i. p. 201. Ed. 1820.
