popularly supposed, regard “sensible things” as created and regulated by the activity of his own individual mind. They are perceived, but are neither created nor regulated, by the individual percipient, and are thus _practically external_ to each person.
601 Cf. sect. 87-91, against the scepticism which originates in alleged fallacy of sense.
602 Omitted in second edition.
603 It is always to be remembered that with Berkeley ideas or phenomena presented to sense are _themselves_ the real things, whilst ideas of imagination are representative (or misrepresentative).
604 Here feelings of pleasure or pain are spoken of, without qualification, as in like relation to living mind as sensible things or ideas are.
605 That the ideas of sense should be seen “at a distance of several miles” seems not inconsistent with their being dependent on a percipient, if ambient space is _itself_ (as Berkeley asserts) dependent on percipient experience. Cf. sect. 67.
606 In the preceding year.
608 Ibid. sect. 11-15.
609 Ibid. sect. 16-28.
610 Ibid. sect. 51.
612 Ibid. sect. 43.
613 i.e. what we are _immediately_ percipient of in seeing.
614 Touch is here and elsewhere taken in its wide meaning, and includes our muscular and locomotive experience, all which Berkeley included in the “tactual” meaning of distance.
615 To explain the condition of sensible things _during the intervals of our perception of them_, consistently with the belief of all sane persons regarding the material world, is a challenge which has been often addressed to the advocates of ideal Realism. According to Berkeley, there are no intervals in the existence of sensible things. They are permanently perceivable, under the laws of nature, though not always perceived by this, that or the other individual percipient. Moreover they always exist _really_ in the Divine Idea, and _potentially_, in relation to finite minds, in the Divine Will.
616 Berkeley allows to bodies unperceived by me potential, but (for me) not real existence. When I say a body exists thus conditionally, I mean that if, in the light, I open my eyes, I shall see it, and that if I move my hand, I must feel it.
617 i.e. unperceived material substance.
618 Berkeley remarks, in a letter to the American Samuel Johnson, that “those who have contended for a material world have yet acknowledged that _natura naturans_ (to use the language of the Schoolmen) is God; and that the Divine conservation of things is equipollent to, and in fact the same thing with, a continued repeated creation;—in a word, that conservation and creation differ only as the _terminus a quo_. These are the common opinions of Schoolmen; and Durandus, who held the world to be a machine, like a clock made up and put in motion by God, but afterwards continued to go of itself, was therein particular, and had few followers. The very poets teach a doctrine not unlike the Schools—_mens agitat molem_ (Virgil, Æneid, VI). The Stoics and Platonists are everywhere full of the same notion. I am not therefore singular in this point itself, so much as in my way of proving it.” Cf. _Alciphron_, Dial. IV. sect. 14; _Vindication of especially in the latter part. See also _Correspondence between Clarke and Leibniz_ (1717). Is it not possible that the universe of things and persons is in continuous natural creation, unbeginning and unending?
619 Cf. sect. 123-132.
620 He distinguishes “idea” from “mode or attribute.” With Berkeley, the “substance” of _matter_ (if the term is still to be applied to sensible things) is the naturally constituted aggregate of phenomena of which each particular thing consists. Now extension, and the other qualities of sensible things, are not, Berkeley argues, “in mind” either (_a_) according to the abstract relation of substance and attribute of which philosophers speak; nor (_b_) as one idea or phenomenon is related to another idea or phenomenon, in the natural aggregation of sense-phenomena which constitute, with him, the _substance_ of a _material_ thing. Mind and its “ideas” are, on the contrary, related as percipient to perceived—in whatever “otherness” that altogether _sui generis_ relation implies.
621 “Matter,” i.e. abstract material Substance, as distinguished from the concrete things that are realised in living perceptions.
622 “take away natural causes,” i.e. empty the material world of all originative power, and refer the supposed powers of bodies to the constant and omnipresent agency of God.
623 Some philosophers have treated the relation of Matter to Mind in _perception_ as one of cause and effect. This, according to Berkeley, is an illegitimate analysis, which creates a fictitious duality. On his New Principles, philosophy is based on a recognition of the fact, that perception is neither the cause nor the effect of its object, but in a relation to it that is altogether _sui generis_.
624 He refers to Descartes, and perhaps Geulinx and Malebranche, who, while they argued for material _substance_, denied the _causal efficiency_ of sensible things. Berkeley’s new Principles are presented as the foundation in reason for this denial, and for the essential spirituality of all active power in the universe.
625 On the principle, “Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem.”
626 “external things,” i.e. things in the abstract.
627 That the unreflecting part of mankind should have a confused conception of what should be meant by the _external reality_ of matter is not wonderful. It is the office of philosophy to improve their conception, making it deeper and truer, and this was Berkeley’s preliminary task; as a mean for shewing the impotence of the things of sense, and conclusive evidence of omnipresent spiritual activity.
presented to the senses, are independent of the _will_ of the individual percipient, it does not follow that they are independent of _all perception_, so that they can be real in the absence of realising percipient experience. Cf. sect. 29-33.
630 By shewing that what we are percipient of in sense must be _idea_, or that it is immediately known by us only as sensuous appearance.
631 i.e. “imprinted” by unperceived Matter, which, on this dogma of a representative sense-perception, was assumed to exist behind the perceived ideas, and to be the _cause_ of their appearance. Cf.
_Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous_.
632 Hence the difficulty men have in recognising that Divine Reason and Will, and Law in Nature, are coincident. But the advance of scientific discovery of the laws which express Divine Will in nature, instead of narrowing, extends our knowledge of God. And _divine_ or _absolutely reasonable_ “arbitrariness” is not caprice.
633 “ideas,” i.e. ideas of _sense_. This “experience” implied an association of sensuous ideas, according to the divine or reasonable order of nature.
634 Cf. sect. 25-33, and other passages in Berkeley’s writings in which he insists upon the _arbitrariness_—divine or reasonable—of the natural laws and sense-symbolism.
635 Cf. sect. 3, 4, 6, 22-24, 26, in which he proceeds upon the intuitive certainty of his two leading Principles, concerning 636 In short, what is virtually the language of universal natural order is the divine way of revealing omnipresent Intelligence; nor can we conceive how this revelation could be made through a capricious or chaotic succession of changes.
637 He here touches on moral purpose in miraculous phenomena, but without discussing their relation to the divine, or perfectly reasonable, order of the universe. Relatively to a fine knowledge of nature, they seem anomalous—exceptions from general rules, which nevertheless express, immediately and constantly, perfect active Reason.
638 “ideas,” i.e. the phenomena presented to the senses.
639 “imaginable”—in first edition.
640 “the connexion of ideas,” i.e. the presence of law or reasonable uniformity in the coexistence and succession of the phenomena of sense; which makes them interpretable signs.
641 According to Berkeley, it is by an abuse of language that the term “power” is applied to those ideas which are invariable antecedents of other ideas—the prior forms of their existence, as it were.
642 Berkeley, in meeting this objection, thus implies Universal Natural Symbolism as the essential character of the sensible world, in its relation to man.
643 See Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. IV, ch. 3, § 25-28, &c., in which he suggests that the secondary qualities of bodies may be the natural issue of the different relations and modifications of their primary qualities.
644 With Berkeley, _material substance_ is merely the natural combination of sense-presented phenomena, which, under a _divine_ or _reasonable_ “arbitrariness,” constitute a concrete thing. Divine Will, or Active Reason, is the constantly sustaining cause of this combination or substantiation.
645 i.e. that it is not realised in a living percipient experience.
646 For “place” is realised only as perceived—percipient experience being its concrete existence. Living perception is, with Berkeley, the condition of the possibility of concrete locality.
647 So in the Cartesian theory of occasional causes.
648 So Geulinx and Malebranche.
649 As known in Divine intelligence, they are accordingly _Divine Ideas_. And, if this means that the sensible system is the expression of Divine Ideas, which are its ultimate archetype—that the Ideas of God are symbolised to our senses, and then interpreted (or misinterpreted) by human minds, this allies itself with Platonic Idealism.
650 “It seems to me,” Hume says, “that this theory of the universal energy and operation of the Supreme Being is _too bold_ ever to carry conviction with it to a mind sufficiently apprised of the weakness of human reason, and the narrow limits to which it is confined in all its operations.” But is it not virtually presupposed in the assumed trustworthiness of our experience of the universe?
651 Accordingly we are led to ask, what the deepest support of their reality must be. Is it found in living Spirit, i.e. Active Reason, or in blind Matter?
652 e.g. Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, &c.
653 In short, if we mean by Matter, something unrealised in percipient experience of sense, what is called its _reality_ is something unintelligible.
654 And if sensible phenomena are _sufficiently_ externalised, when regarded as regulated by Divine Reason.
655 Twenty years after the publication of the _Principles_, in a letter to his American friend Johnson, Berkeley says:—“I have no objection against calling the Ideas in the mind of God _archetypes_ of ours.
But I object against those archetypes by philosophers supposed to be real things, and so to have an absolute rational existence distinct from their being perceived by any mind whatsoever; it being the opinion of all materialists that an ideal existence in the Divine Mind is one thing, and the real existence of material things another.”
656 Berkeley’s philosophy is not inconsistent with Divine Ideas which receive expression in the laws of nature, and of which human science is the imperfect interpretation. In this view, assertion of the existence of Matter is simply an expression of faith that the phenomenal universe into which we are born is a reasonable and interpretable universe; and that it would be fully interpreted, if our notions could be fully harmonised with the Divine Ideas which it expresses.
657 Cf. sect. 3-24.
658 So that superhuman persons, endowed with a million senses, would be no nearer this abstract Matter than man is, with his few senses.
659 Matter and physical science is _relative_, so far that we may suppose in other percipients than men, an indefinite number of additional senses, affording corresponding varieties of qualities in things, of course inconceivable by man. Or, we may suppose an intelligence destitute of _all our_ senses, and so in a material world wholly different in its appearances from ours.
660 The authority of Holy Scripture, added to our natural tendency to believe in external reality, are grounds on which Malebranche and Norris infer a material world. Berkeley’s material world claims no logical proof of its reality. His is not to prove the reality of the world, but to shew what we should mean when we affirm its reality, and the basis of its explicability in science.
661 i.e. existing unrealised in any intelligence—human or Divine.
662 “external things,” i.e. things existing really, yet out of all relation to active living spirit.
663 Simultaneous perception of the “same” (similar?) _sense_-ideas, _by different persons_, as distinguished from purely individual consciousness of feelings and fancies, is here taken as a test of the _virtually external reality_ of the former.
Berkeley does not ask whether the change of the rod into a serpent, or of the water into wine, is the issue of divine agency and order, otherwise than as all natural evolution is divinely providential.
664 Some of the Consequences of adoption of the New Principles, in their application to the physical sciences and mathematics, and then to psychology and theology, are unfolded in the remaining sections of the _Principles_.
665 Berkeley disclaims the supposed _representative_ character of the ideas given in sensuous perception, and recognises as the real object only what is ideally presented in consciousness.
666 So Hume, Reid, and Hamilton, who all see in a wholly representative sense-perception, with its double object, the germ of total scepticism. Berkeley claims that, under _his_ interpretation of what the reality of the material world means, immediate knowledge of mind-dependent matter is given in sense.
667 “scepticism”—“sceptical cant” in the first edition.
668 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.
far resembles that afterwards employed by Reid and Hamilton. They differ as regards the dependence of the sensible object upon percipient spirit for its reality.
670 Omitted in second edition.
671 Omitted in second edition.
672 But whilst unthinking things depend on being perceived, do not our spirits depend on ideas of some sort for their percipient life?
673 The important passage within brackets was added in the second edition.
675 “Notion,” in its stricter meaning, is thus confined by Berkeley to apprehension of the _Ego_, and intelligence of _relations_. The term “notion,” in this contrast with _his_ “idea,” becomes important in his vocabulary, although he sometimes uses it vaguely.
676 Locke uses _idea_ in this wider signification.
677 Inasmuch as they are _real_ in and through living percipient mind.
679 In this section Berkeley explains what he means by _externality_.
Men cannot act, cannot live, without assuming an external world—in some meaning of the term “external.” It is the business of the philosopher to explicate its true meaning.
680 i.e. they are not _substances_ in the truest or deepest meaning of the word.
681 “Ideas of the corporeal substances.” Berkeley might perhaps say—Divine Ideas which are _themselves_ our world of sensible things in its ultimate form.
682 On the scheme of ideal Realism, “creation” of matter is presenting to finite minds sense-ideas or phenomena, which are, as it were, letters of the alphabet, in that language of natural order which God employs for the expression of _His_ Ideas to us.
683 The _independent_ eternity of Matter must be distinguished from an unbeginning and endless _creation_ of sensible ideas or phenomena, in percipient spirits, according to divine natural law and order, with implied immanence of God.
684 Because the question at issue with Atheism is, whether the universe of things and persons is finally substantiated and evolved in unthinking Matter or in the perfect Reason of God.
685 Of which Berkeley does _not_ predicate a _numerical_ identity. Cf.
_Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous_.
686 “matter,” i.e. matter abstracted from all percipient life and voluntary activity.
687 “external”—not in Berkeley’s meaning of externality. Cf. sect. 90, note 2.
_ 688 Si non rogas, intelligo._ Berkeley writes long after this to Johnson thus:—“A succession of ideas (phenomena) I take to _constitute_ time, and not to be only the sensible measure thereof, as Mr. Locke and others think. But in these matters every man is to think for himself, and speak as he finds. One of my earliest inquiries was about _time_; which led me into several paradoxes that I did not think it fit or necessary to publish, particularly into the notion that the resurrection follows the next moment after death. We are confounded and perplexed about time—supposing a succession in God; that we have an abstract idea of time; that time in one mind is to be measured by succession of ideas in another mind: not considering the true use of words, which as often terminate in the will as in the understanding, being employed to excite and direct action rather than to produce clear and distinct ideas.” Cf. Introduction, sect. 20.
689 As the _esse_ of unthinking things is _percipi_, according to Berkeley, so the _esse_ of persons is _percipere_. The real existence of individual Mind thus depends on having ideas of some sort: the real existence of matter depends on a percipient.
690 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.
691 Cf. _New Theory of Vision_, sect. 43.
692 “objects of sense,” i.e. sensible things, practically external to each person. Cf. sect. 1, on the meaning of _thing_, as distinct from the distinguishable ideas or phenomena that are naturally aggregated in the form of concrete things.
693 Omitted in second edition.
694 Omitted in second edition.
695 Cf. Introduction, sect. 1-3. With Berkeley, the real essence of sensible things is given in perception—so far as our perceptions carry us.
697 Berkeley advocates a Realism, which eliminates effective causation from the material world, concentrates it in Mind, and in physical research seeks among data of sense for their divinely maintained natural laws.
698 In interpreting the data of sense, we are obliged to assume that every _new_ phenomenon must have previously existed in some equivalent form—but not necessarily in this or that particular form, for a knowledge of which we are indebted to inductive comparisons of experience.
699 The preceding forms of new phenomena, being finally determined by Will, are, in that sense, arbitrary; but not capricious, for the Will is perfect Reason. God is the immanent cause of the natural order.
700 He probably refers to Bacon.
701 Omitted in second edition.
702 What we are able to discover in the all-comprehensive order may be subordinate and provisional only. Nature in its deepest meaning explains itself in the Divine Omniscience.
705 “seem to consider signs,” i.e. to be grammarians rather than philosophers: physical sciences deal with the grammar of the divine language of nature.
706 “A man may be well read in the language of nature without understanding the grammar of it, or being able to say,” &c.—in first edition.
707 “extend”—“stretch”—in first edition.
708 Omitted in second edition.
709 In the first edition, the section commences thus: “The best grammar of the kind we are speaking of will be easily acknowledged to be a treatise of _Mechanics_, demonstrated and applied to Nature, by a philosopher of a neighbouring nation, whom all the world admire. I shall not take upon me to make remarks on the performance of that extraordinary person: only some things he has advanced so directly opposite to the doctrine we have hitherto laid down, that we should be wanting in the regard due to the authority of so great a man did we not take some notice of them.” He refers, of course, to Newton.
The first edition of Berkeley’s _Principles_ was published in in 1687.
710 “Motion,” in various aspects, is treated specially in the _De Motu_.
An imagination of trinal space presupposes locomotive experience—unimpeded, in contrast with—impeded locomotion. Cf. sect.
116.
711 Omitted in second edition.
712 Added in second edition.
713 Omitted in second edition.
Berkeley, can only be attributed metaphorically to the so-called impelling body; inasmuch as _bodies_, or the data of sense, can only be signs of their consequent events, not efficient causes of change.
718 Added in second edition.
719 What follows to the end of this section is omitted in the second edition.
720 “seems impossible”—“is above my capacity”—in first edition.
721 In short, empty Space _is_ the sensuous idea of unresisted motion.
This is implied in the _New Theory of Vision_. He minimises Space, treating it as a datum of sense.
722 He probably refers to Samuel Clarke’s _Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God_, which appeared in 1706, and a treatise _De Spatio Reali_, published in the same year.
723 Sect. 118-132 are accordingly concerned with the New Principles in their application to Mathematics. The foundation of the mathematical sciences engaged much of Berkeley’s thought in early life and in his later years. See his _Analyst_.
724 Numerical relations are _realised_ only in concrete experience.
727 An infinitely divided extension, being unperceived, must be unreal—if its existence is made real only in and through actual perception, or at least imagination. The only possible extension is, accordingly, sensible extension, which could not be infinitely divided without the supposed parts ceasing to be perceived or real.
730 “will perhaps in virtue thereof be brought to admit,” &c.—“will not stick to affirm,” &c.—in first edition.
731 Omitted in second edition. See the _Analyst_.
732 “we must mean”—“we mean (if we mean anything)”—in first edition.
733 Omitted in the second edition.
734 Does this refer to the intended “Part II” of the _Principles_?
735 “men of great abilities and obstinate application,” &c.—“men of the greatest abilities and most obstinate application,” &c.—in first edition.
736 What follows to the end of this section is omitted in the second edition.
something of which there can be no sensuous perception or conception.
738 Matter unrealised in perception—not the material world that is realised in percipient experience of sense.
739 Omitted in second edition.
740 Sect. 135-156 treat of consequences of the New Principles, in their application to sciences concerned with our notions of _Spirit_ or _Mind_; as distinguished from sciences of ideas in external Nature, and their mathematical relations. Individual mind, with Berkeley, needs data of sense in order to its realisation in consciousness; while it is dependent on God, in a relation which he does not define distinctly.
741 e.g. Locke suggests this.
742 Is this analogy applicable?
743 Omitted in second edition, as he had previously learned to distinguish _notion_ from _idea_. Cf. sect. 89, 142.
744 Ibid. In the omitted passage it will be seen that he makes _idea_ and _notion_ synonymous.
745 Is the reality of mind as dependent on having ideas (of some sort) as ideas are on mind; although mind is more deeply and truly real than its ideas are?
746 Introduced in second edition.
747 We know _other finite persons_ through sense-presented phenomena, but not as themselves phenomena. Cf. sect. 145. It is a mediate knowledge that we have of other persons. The question about the individuality of finite egos, as distinguished from God, Berkeley has not touched.
748 These sentences are omitted in the second edition.
751 This is Berkeley’s application of his new conception of the reality of matter, to the final human question of the self-conscious existence of the individual human Ego, after physical death.
Philosophers and theologians were accustomed in his generation to ground their argument for a future life on the metaphysical assumption of the physical indivisibility of our self-conscious spirit, and on our contingent connexion with the body. “Our bodies,” says Bishop Butler, “are no more _ourselves_, or _part of ourselves_, than any other matter around us.” This train of thought is foreign to us at the present day, when men of science remind us that self-conscious life is found only in correlation with corporeal organisation, whatever may be the abstract possibility. Hope of continued life after physical death seems to depend on ethical considerations more than on metaphysical arguments, and on what is suggested by faith in the final outcome of personal life in a _divinely_ constituted universe.
752 Mind and the ideas presented to the senses are at opposite poles of existence. But he does not say that, thus opposed, they are each independent of the other.
753 What follows was introduced in the second edition, in which _notion_ is contrasted with _idea_.
754 Here is a germ of Kantism. But Berkeley has not analysed that activity of mind which constitutes _relation_, nor systematically unfolded the relations involved in the rational constitution of experience. There is more disposition to this in _Siris_.
755 As with Locke, for example.
756 Note this condemnation of the tendency to substantiate “powers of mind.”
757 Omitted in second edition. Berkeley was after all reluctant to “depart from received modes of speech,” notwithstanding their often misleading associations.
758 Omitted in second edition.
759 This is one of the notable sections in the _Principles_, as it suggests the _rationale_ of Berkeley’s rejection of Panegoism or Solipsism. Is this consistent with his conception of the reality of the material world? It is objected (e.g. by Reid) that ideal realism dissolves our faith in the existence of other persons. The difficulty is to shew how appearances presented to my senses, which are sensuous and subjective, can be media of communication between persons. The question carries us back to the theistic presupposition in the trustworthiness of experience—which is adapted to deceive if I am the only person existing. With Berkeley a chief function of ideas of sense is to signify other persons to each person. See _Alciphron_, Dial. IV; _New Theory of Vision Vindicated_, and _Siris_.
760 “repugnant”—for it would involve thought in incoherence, by paralysis of its indispensable causal presupposition.
761 Is not God the indispensable presupposition of trustworthy experience, rather than an empirical inference?
762 This suggests an explanation of the objective reality and significance of _ideas of sense_; through which they become media of social intercourse in the fundamentally divine universe. God so regulates the sense-given ideas of which human beings are individually percipient, as that, _while numerically different, as in each mind_, those ideas are nevertheless a sufficient medium for social intercourse, if the Power universally at work is morally trustworthy. Unless our God-given experience is deceiving, Solipsism is not a necessary result of the fact that no one but myself can be percipient of my sensuous experience.
763 Omitted in second edition.
764 Malebranche, as understood by Berkeley. See _Recherche_, Liv. III.
p. ii. ch. 6, &c.
765 For all finite persons _somehow_ live, and move, and have their being “in God.” The existence of _eternal_ living Mind, and the _present_ existence of other men, are both _inferences_, resting on the same foundation, according to Berkeley.
766 The theistic trust in which our experience is rooted remaining latent, or being unintelligent.
767 Cf. sect. 25-28, 51-53, 60-66. His conception of Divine causation in Nature, as the constant omnipresent agency in all natural law, is the deepest part of his philosophy. It is pursued in the _De Motu_.
768 Is not the unbeginning and unending natural evolution, an articulate revelation of Eternal Spirit or Active Reason at the heart of the whole?
769 Omitted in second edition.
770 So Pascal in the _Pensées_.
771 Divine reason ever active in Nature is the necessary correlate to reason in man; inasmuch as otherwise the changing universe in which we live would be unfit to be reasoned about or acted in.
772 The existence of _moral_ evil, or what ought not to exist, is _the_ difficulty which besets faith in the fundamental divinity or goodness of the universe. Yet that faith is presupposed in interpretation of nature, which proceeds on the _postulate_ of universal order; and this implies the moral trustworthiness of the world which we begin to realise when we begin to be conscious. That we are living and having our being in omnipotent goodness is thus not an inference, but the implied basis of all real inferences. I have expanded this thought in my _Philosophy of Theism_. We cannot _prove_ God, for we must assume God, as the basis of all proof.
Faith even in the uniformity of nature is virtually faith in omnipotent goodness immanent in the universe.
773 So Leibniz in his _Theodicée_, which was published in the same year 774 The divine presupposition, latent in all human reasoning and experience, is hid from the unreflecting, in whom the higher life is dormant, and the ideal in the universe is accordingly undiscerned.
Unless the universe is assumed to be physically and morally trustworthy, i.e. unless God is presupposed, even natural science has no adequate foundation.
775 Our necessarily incomplete knowledge of the Universe in which we find ourselves is apt to disturb the fundamental faith, that the phenomena presented to us are significant of God. Yet we _tacitly assume_ that they are thus significant when we interpret real experience, physical or moral.
776 Omitted in second edition.
777 For the following extracts from previously unpublished correspondence of Berkeley and Sir John Percival, I am indebted to the kindness of his descendant, the late Lord Egmont.
778 What Berkeley seeks to shew is, not that the world of the senses is unreal, but in what its reality consists. Is it inexplicable chaos, or explicable expression of ever active Intelligence, more or less interpreted in natural science?
779 Leibniz: _De modo distinguendi Phenomena Realia ab Imaginariis_ (1707).
780 For some information relative to Gua de Malves, see Querard’s _La France Littéraire,_ tom. iii. p. 494.
781 The following is the translator’s Prefatory Note, on the objects of the _Dialogues,_ and in explanation of the three illustrative vignettes:— “L’Auteur expose dans le premier Dialogue le sentiment du Vulgaire et celui des Philosophes, sur les qualités secondaires et premieres, la nature et l’existence des corps; et il prétend prouver en même tems l’insuffisance de l’un et de l’autre. La Vignette qu’on voit à la téte du Dialogue, fait allusion à cet objet. Elle représente un Philosophe dans son cabinet, lequel est distrait de son travail par un enfant qu’il appercoit se voyant lui-méme dans un miroir, en tendant les mains pour embrasser sa propre image. Le Philosophe rit de l’erreur où il croit que tombe l’enfant; tandis qu’on lui applique à lui-même ces mots tirés d’Horace: _ Fabula narratur._ “Le second Dialogue est employé à exposer le sentiment de l’Auteur sur le même sujet, sçavoir, que les choses corporelles ont une existence réelle dans les esprits qui les apperçoivent; mais qu’elles ne sçauroient exister hors de tous les esprits à la fois, même de l’esprit infini de Dieu; et que par conséquent la Matière, prise suivant l’acception ordinaire du mot, non seulement n’existe point, mais seroit même absolument impossible. On a taché de représenter aux yeux ce sentiment dans la Vignette du Dialogue. Le mot grec νοῦς qui signifie _âme_, désigne l’àme: les rayons qui en partent marquent l’attention que l’âme donne à des idées ou objets; les tableaux qu’on a placés aux seuls endroits où les rayons aboutissent, et dont les sujets sont tirés de la description des