life, and weds us so passionately to its rosy forms; we are not able to realise the thought or the fear, and this it is which makes us secretly to rejoice "in the sublime attractions of the grave." Woe to us, if we could indeed think of death! In the real thought of it we should be already dead, but in the mere illusive imagination of the thought we are already an immortal race. We have nothing to wait for; eternity is even now within us, and time, with all its vexing troubles, is no more.[1]
But to return to Berkeley. What then is the precise position in which he has left the question respecting man and the material universe? He maintains, as we have said, that matter depends entirely for its existence upon mind. And in this opinion we cordially agree with him. But we must be allowed to widen very amply the basis of his principle, otherwise, on account of the doctrine thus professed, we feel well assured that our friends would be disposed to call our sanity in question. Berkeley's doctrine amounts to this, that there are trees, for instance, and houses in the world, because they are either seen, and so forth, or thought of as seen, and so forth. But here his groundwork is far too narrow, for it seems to imply this, that there would be no trees and no houses unless they were seen, or thought of as seen. It is therefore exposed to strong
- ↑ Wordsworth's little poem, entitled 'We are Seven,' illustrates this great law of human thought—the natural inconceivability of death; and hence, simple as its character may be, it is rooted in the most profound and recondite psychological truth.
