As the touched, the seen, the heard, the smelled, and the tasted, he admitted and maintained its existence as readily and completely as the most illiterate and unsophisticated of mankind.
In what sense, then, was it that Berkeley denied the existence of matter? He denied it not in the sense in which the multitude understood it, but solely in the sense in which philosophers[1] understood and explained it. And what was it that philosophers understood by matter? They understood by it an occult something which, in itself, is not touched, not seen, not heard, not smelled, and not tasted; a phantom-world lying behind the visible and tangible universe, and which, though constituting in their estimation the sum and substance of all reality, is yet never itself brought within the sphere or apprehension of the senses. Thus, under the direction of a misguided imagination, they fancied that the sensible qualities which we perceive in things, were copies of other occult qualities of which we have no perception; and that the whole sensible world was the unsubstantial representation of another and real world, hidden entirely from observation, and inaccessible to all our faculties.
Now it was against this metaphysical phantom of the brain, this crotchet-world of philosophers, and against it alone, that all the attacks of Berkeley were directed. The doctrine that the realities of things were not made for man, and that he must rest satisfied with their mere appearances, was regarded, and rightly regarded by him, as the parent of scepticism, [2] with all her desolating train. He saw that philosophy, in giving up the reality immediately within her grasp, in favour of a reality supposed to be less delusive, which lay beyond the limits of experience, resembled the dog in the fable, who, carrying a piece of meat across a river, let the substance slip from his jaws, while, with foolish greed, he snatched at its shadow in the stream. The dog lost his dinner, and philosophy let go her secure hold upon the truth. He therefore sided with the vulgar, who recognise no distinction between the reality and the appearance of objects, and, repudiating the baseless hypothesis of a world existing unknown and unperceived, he resolutely maintained that what are called the sensible shows of things are in truth the very things themselves.
The precise point of this polemic between Berkeley and the philosophers, is so admirably stated in the writings of David Hume, that we feel we cannot do justice to the subject without quoting his simple and perspicuous words—premising, however, that the arch sceptic had his own good reasons for not doing full justice to his great forerunner. Nothing indeed was further from his intention than the wish that the world should know the side which, in this controversy, Berkeley had so warmly espoused. Had he furnished this information, he would have frustrated the whole scope of his own observations.
"Men," says Hume, "are carried by a natural instinct or prepossession to repose faith in their senses. When they follow this blind and powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the very images presented to the senses to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion that the one are nothing but representations of the other. But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception. So far, then, we are necessitated by reasoning to contradict or depart from the primary instincts of nature, and to embrace a new system with regard to the evidence of our senses. But here philosophy finds herself extremely embarrassed, when she would justify this new system, and obviate the cavils and objections of the sceptics. She can no longer plead the infallible and irresistible instinct of nature, for that led us to a quite different system, which is acknowledged fallible and even erroneous. And to justify this pretended philosophical system by a chain of clear and convincing argument, or even any appearance of argument, exceeds the power of all
