366 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 



matter, and, consequently, material objects and material organs have not 

 and cannot have, a being, he does not mean, as Dr. Beattie has represented 

 him to mean, that he himself, or his own mind, is the only created being in the 

 universe ;* nor that external objects and external qualities do not and cannot 

 exist independent of, and distinct from, created mind. He allows as unequi- 

 vocally as Dr. Beattie himself the existence of fellow-minds or fellow-beings, 

 possessing appropriate senses, as also the existence of external and real ob- 

 jects, and of external and real qualities by which such senses are really and 

 definitely influenced; contending alone that none of these objects or qualities 

 are material, or any thing more than effects of the immediate agency of an 

 ever-present Deity, " who," to adopt his own words, " knows and compre- 

 hends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a manner, and accord- 

 ing to such rules as he himself has ordained, and are termed by us the laws of 

 nature. — When," says he, " in broad daylight 1 open my eyes, it is not in my 

 power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to determine what particular 

 objects shall present themselves to my view ; and so likewise as to the hear- 

 ing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my 

 will. There is, therefore, some other will or spirit that produces them. The 

 question between the materialists and me is not whether things have a real 

 existence out of the mind of this or that person, but whether they have an ab- 

 solute existence, distinct from being perceived by (in) God and exterior to all 

 minds 1 I assert as well as they, that since we are affected from without, we 

 must allow powers to be without in a being distinct from ourselves. So far 

 we are agreed. But then we differ as to the kind of this powerful being. I 

 will have it to be spirit : they matter, or I know not what third nature."! 



According to Dr. Beattie, Berkeley taught " that external objects (that is, 

 the things which we take for external objects) are nothing but ideas in our 

 minds ; and that independent of us and our faculties, the earth, the sun, and 

 the starry heavens have no existence at all ; that a lighted candle has not 

 one of those qualities which it appears to have ; that it is not white, nor lumi- 

 nous, nor round, nor divisible, nor extended ; but that, for anything we know, 

 or can ever know to the contrary, it may be an Egyptian pyramid, the king of 

 Prussia, a mad dog, the island of Madagascar, Saturn's ring, one of the Plei- 

 ades, or nothing at all." 



Now all this shows a fruitful fund of pleasantry, but in the present case it 

 is pleasantry somewhat misapplied. It wouid indeed be a woful state of 

 things if such w^ere the confusion or anomaly of our ideas, that we could never 

 distinguish one object from another, and were forever mistaking the king of 

 Prussia for an Egyptian pyramid, a lighted candle for a mad dog, and the 

 island of Madagascar for the Pleiades or Saturn's ring. But it M'ould be a 

 state of things no more chargeable to Dr. Berkeley's than to Dr. Beattie's 

 view of nature; since the former supposes as perfect a reality in external 

 objects, that they have as perfect an independence of the mind that perceives 

 them, the possession of as permanent and definite qualities, and as regular a 

 catenation of causes and effects, as the latter : or, in other words, it sup- 

 poses that all things exist as they appear to exist, and must necessarily pro- 

 duce such effects as we find them produce, but that they do not exist corpo- 

 really ; that they have no substrate and can have no substrate of matter, nor 

 any other being than that given them by the immediate agency of the Deity ; 

 or, in still fewer words, that all things exist and are only seen to exist in 

 God : a representation of nature, which, however erroneous, is by no means 

 necessarily connected with those mischievous and fatal consequences which 

 Dr. Beattie ascribed to it, and which, if fairly founded, must have been suffi- 

 cient not only to have deterred Bishop Berkeley from starting it at first, but 

 those very excellent prelates and acute reasoners. Bishop Sherlock and 

 Bishop Smallwood, from becoming converts to it afterward. 



The hypothesis, however, after taking away all undue colouring, and re- 

 garding it as merely assuming the non-existence of matter and a material 



Beattie on Truth, 8vo. p. 159, 



t Princip. of Hum. Knowledge 



