326 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [xm. 



attribute to any single part of them an existence independent of a 

 spirit." 1 



Doubtless this passage sounds like the acme of meta- 

 physical paradox, and we all know that " coxcombs 

 vanquished Berkeley with a grin ; " while common-sense 

 folk refuted him by stamping 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 argu- 

 ment by which Berkeley arrived at his results, and to 

 know by one's own knowledge the great truth which he 

 discovered that the honest and rigorous following up of 

 the argument 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 anyone 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 at the ab- 

 surdity of the phraseology. In fact, it is utterly impos- 

 sible to conceive pain except as a state of consciousness. 



Hence, so far as pain is concerned, it is sufficiently 

 obvious that Berkeley's phraseology is strictly applicable 

 to our power of conceiving its existence " its being is 

 to be perceived or known," and " so long as it is not 

 actually perceived by me, or does not exist in my mind, 

 or that of any other created spirit, it must either have 

 no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some 

 eternal spirit." 



1 " Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge," Part I. 6. 



