2 24 Thomas Henry Huxley 



position and acute reasoning at his disposal, did not 

 pass directly into the other camp and become a pure 

 idealist. 



"Granting the premisses," be wrote, "I do not see any 

 escape from Berkeley's conclusion, that the substance of mat- 

 ter is a metaphysical unknown quantity, of the existence of 

 which there is no proof. What Berkeley does not seem to have 

 so clearly perceived is that the non-existence of a substance of 

 mind is equally arguable ; and that the result of the impartial 

 application of his reasonings is the reduction of the all to co- 

 existences and sequences of phenomena, beneath and beyond 

 which there is nothing coguoscible." 



Hume had written : ' ' What we call a mind is no- 

 thing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, 

 united together by certain relations, and supposed, 

 though falsel}', to be endowed with a perfect simplicit)' 

 and identity." Here was mind rejected for the same 

 negative reasons as matter, and Huxley was as ready 

 to point out that while we can know nothing of the 



"substance of the thinking thing, we go beyond legitimate 

 reasoning if we therefore deny its existence." . . . "Hume 

 may be right or wrong, but the most he or anyone else can 

 prove in favour of his conclusions is, that we know nothing 

 more of the mind than that it is' a series of perceptions. 

 Whether there is something in the mind that lies beyond the 

 reach of observation, or whether perceptions themselves are 

 the products of something which can be observed and which 

 is not mind, are questions which can in no wise be settled 

 by direct observation." 



In another passage he writes : 



" To sum up. If the materialist affirms that the universe 

 and all its phenomena are resolvable into matter and motion, 

 Berkeley replies. True ; but what you call matter and motion 

 are known to us only as forms of consciousness ; their being 

 is to be conceived or known ; and the existence of a state of 



