THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 253 



existence at all or else subsist in the mind of some eternal 

 spirit ; it being perfectly unintelligible, and involving all 

 the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part 

 of them an existence independent of a spirit." * 



Doubtless this passage sounds like the acme of 

 metaphysical paradox, and we all know that 

 " coxcombs vanquished Berkeley with a grin; " 

 while common-sense folk refuted him by stamp- 

 ing on the ground, or some such other irrelevant 

 proceeding. But the key to all philosophy lies in 

 the clear apprehension of Berkeley's problem 

 which is neither more nor less than one of the 

 shapes of the greatest of all questions, " What are 

 the limits of our faculties?" And it is worth 

 any amount of trouble to comprehend the exact 

 nature of the argument by which Berkeley arrived 

 at his results, and to know by one's own knowl- 

 edge the great truth which he discovered that 

 the honest and rigorous following up of the argu- 

 ment which leads us to " materialism," inevitably 

 carries us beyond it. 



Suppose that I accidentally prick my finger 

 with a pin. I immediately become aware of a 

 condition of my consciousness a feeling which 

 I term pain. I have no doubt whatever that the 

 feeling is in myself alone; and if any one were 

 to say that the pain I feel is something which 

 inheres in the needle, as one of the qualities of 

 the substance of the needle, we should all laugh 



* Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowl- 

 edge, Part 1. 6. 



