Locke, in the twenty-third chapter of his second book, had 

 attacked the traditional notion of substance, and had gone so far 

 as to say that no one has any idea of pure substance in general other 

 than a "supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities 

 which are capable of producing simple ideas in us". 1 Berkeley 

 unhesitatingly affirms that there is no knowledge whatsoever of 

 matter as such a pure substance. Matter is one of those abstract 

 ideas, which ideas, accordingly to Berkeley, have rendered specu- 

 lation intricate and perplexed and occasioned innumerable errors 

 and difficulties. But, if there is no knowledge of matter in general, 

 neither is there any knowledge of particular bodies supposedly com- 

 posed of such matter. The objects of human knowledge are ideas, 

 simple or complex, and when "several of these are observed to 

 accompany each other they come to be marked by one name and 

 so to be reputed as one thing". 2 It is, however, says Berkeley, an 

 opinion strangely prevailing among men, that houses, mountains, 

 rivers, and, in a word, all sensible objects have an existence, natural 

 or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding; 

 but such an opinion involves a manifest contradiction, for all these 

 objects are things we perceive by sense and we perceive nothing but 

 our ideas or sensations, and it is plainly repugnant that any one of 

 these, or any combination of them should exist unperceived. 3 

 Here is contained the kernel of Berkeley's teaching which may be 

 expressed in his own phrase "esse est percipi". 



"All the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word, 

 all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have 

 not any substance without a mind, . . . their being is to be per- 

 ceived or known, ... so long as they are not actually perceived 

 by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created 

 spirit, they must either have no existence at all or else subsist in 

 the mind of some Eternal Spirit." 4 Berkeley goes on to say 5 , that 

 Locke was right in claiming that the secondary qualities exist 

 only in us, but wrong in permitting to so-called primary qualities 

 an existence external to mind. If bodies themselves exist only in 



1 Op. Cit. Par. 2. 



2 Rationale of the Principles, Par. 1. 

 8 Ibid., Cf. Par. 4. 



4 Ibid., Par. 6. 



5 Ibid., Cf. Pars. 9 and 10. 



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