Philosophy of the Hitman Mind. f 



the same before any creature was made. This 

 consequence he candidly acknowledged, and main- 

 tained that the only evidence we have of the ex- 

 istence of a material world, is derived from Reve- 

 lation, which assures us that God created the 

 heavens and the earth, and that the Word ivas 

 made flesh. This doctrine was vigorously and in- 

 geniously opposed by its author's countryman and 

 cotemporary, Anthony Arnauld, Doctor of the 

 Sorbonne. But though the latter succeeded in 

 showing the weakness and fallacy of the reason- 

 ings which he attacked, he was not equally success- 

 ful in establishing a consistent and satisfactory 

 theory of his own. The system of Malebranche, 

 however, notwithstanding its visionary character, 

 was warmly espoused by Mr. Norris, an English 

 divine, who, in 1701, published a large and la- 

 borious work, designed to explain, support, and 

 extend it. He went beyond the French philoso- 

 pher, on the subject of the material world; for al- 

 though he maintained the probability of its exist- 

 ence, he denied our having any evidence abso- 

 lutely decisive that this is the fact. 



In 1710 a doctrine still more singular and dar- 

 ing was announced by George Berkeley, a phi- 

 losopher of Ireland, and afterwards Bishop of 

 Cloyne. This gentleman, equally distinguished for 

 the penetration and comprehensiveness of his mind, 

 the extent of his learning, and the eminence of his 

 virtues, denied the existence of a material world; 

 contending that what are usually called sensible 

 objects without us, are only ideas in the mind; 

 that th#re is nothing in the universe but spirits, 

 and ideas, or images subsisting in, and perceived 

 by them. He differed from Mr. Locke in several 

 other respects besides this: He discarded reflec- 

 tion as a source of ideas; he divided the objects of 

 human knowledge into two kinds^ ideas ana n4* 



