ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 



411 



siiind. He allows as unequivocally as Dr. Beattie himself the existence 

 of fellow-minds or fellow-beings, possessing appropriate senses, as also the 

 existence of external and real objects, 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 comprehends all things, and exhibits them to 

 our view in such a manner, and according to such rules as he himself has 

 ©rdained, and are termed by us the laws of nature. — When,'' says he, "in 

 broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I 

 shall see or no, or to determine \vhat particular objects shall present them- 

 selves to my view ; and so likewise as to the hearing 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 

 materialist and me is not whether things have a real existence out of the 

 mind of this or tJtat person, but whether they have an absolute existence^ 

 tlistinct from being perceived by (in) God and exterior to all minds ? 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 foj 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 luminous, nor round, nor divisible, nor extended ; but that for any 

 thing 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, Sa- 

 turn's ring, one of the Pleiades, or nothing at all." 



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

 it is pleasantry somewhat misapplied. It would indeed be a woful state 

 of things if such were the confusion or anomaly of our ideas, that we could 

 never distinguish one object from another, and were for ever 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 would 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 supposes that all things exist as they appear to exist, 

 and must necessarily produce such effects as we find them produce, but 

 that they do not exist corporeally ; 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 mis- 

 chievous and fatal consequences which Dr. Beattie ascribed to it, and 

 which, if fairly founded, must have been sufficient not only to have deterred 

 Bishop Berkeley from starting it at first, but those very excellent prelates 



* Princip, of Human Knowledge. 



