Page:Nightmare Abbey (1818).djvu/112

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
NIGHTMARE ABBEY.
101

tonic, which reconciles me to my favorite pursuit of doing nothing, by shewing me that nobody is worth doing any thing for.

Marionetta.

But is there not in such compositions a kind of unconscious self-detection, which seems to carry their own antidote with them? For, surely, no one who cordially and truly either hates or despises the world will publish a volume every three months to say so.

Mr. Flosky.

There is a secret in all this, which I will elucidate with a dusky remark. According to Berkeley, the esse of things is percipi. They exist as they are perceived. But, leaving for the present, as far as relates to the material world, the materialists, hyloists, and antihyloists, to settle this point among them, which is indeed