46 NOTES 



Taking the words cited, as they stand, they amount to 

 the denial of the possibility of any knowledge of substance. 

 ' Matter ' having been resolved into mere affections of ' spirit,' 

 ' spirit ' melts away into an admittedly inconceivable and 

 unknowable hypostasis of thought and power consequently 

 the existence of anything in the universe beyond a flow of 

 phenomena, is a purely hypothetical assumption. Indeed, a 

 pyrrhonist might raise the objection that if ' esse ' is " percipi " 

 spirit itself can have no existence except as a perception, 

 hypostatizecl into a ' self ' or as a perception of some ^ other 

 spirit. In the former case, objective reality vanishes ; in the 

 latter, there would seem to be the need of an infinite series of 

 spirits each perceiving the others. 



It is curious to observe how very closely the phraseology of 

 Berkeley sometimes approaches that of the Stoics : thus (cxlviii.) 

 " It seems to be a general pretence of the unthinking herd that 



they cannot see God But, alas, we need only open our eyes to 



see the Sovereign Lord of all things with a more full and clear 



view, than we do any of our fellow creatures we do at all 



times and in all places perceive manifest tokens of the Divinity : 

 everything we see, hear, feel, or any wise perceive by sense, 



being a sign or effect of the power of God]" cxlix. "It is 



therefore plain, that nothing can be more evident to any one that 

 is capable of the least reflection, than the existence of God, or a 

 spirit who is intimately present to our minds producing in them 

 all that variety of ideas or sensations, which continually affect 

 us, on whom we have an absolute and entire dependence, in 

 short, in whom we live and move and have our being." cL [But 

 you will say hath Nature no share in the production of natural 

 things and must they be all ascribed to the immediate and sole 



operation of God? if by Nature is meant some being distinct 



from God, as well as from the laws of nature and things perceived 

 by sense, I must confess that word is to me an empty sound, 

 without any intelligible meaning annexed to it.] Nature in this 

 acceptation is a vain Chimcera introduced by those heathens, 

 who had not just notions of the omnipresence and infinite perfec- 

 tion of God." 



(Compare Seneca, De JBenejiciis, iv. 7.) 



" Natura, inquit, hsec mihi prsestat. Non intelligis te, quum 

 hoc dicis, mutare Nomen Deo 1 Quid enim est aliud Natura 



