OF ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 



and acute reasoners, Bishop Sherlock and Bishop Smallwood, from be^ 

 coming converts to it afterwards. 



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

 regarding it as merely assuming the non-existence of matter and a mate- 

 rial world, is still abundantly absurd in a philosophical point of view. 

 Yet so fully had Berkeley persuaded himself of its truth, that he had the 

 firmest conviction that if the world be, as it is said to be, composed of men, 

 women and children, of a corporeal and material make, with ground be- 

 neath our feet, and a sky over our heads, every body/ must in his heart 

 beheve as he believed, namely, that there are no such women nor children, 

 no such ground, sky, or any thing else but mind and mental perception. 

 Nevertheless, whichsoever creed be true, he contended that it could make 

 no difference in the regulation of our moral conduct ; which he endea- 

 vours to prove by the following notable strain of argument : That 

 nothing gives us interest in the material world except the feelings, pleasant 

 or painful, Avhich accompany our perceptions ; that these perceptions are 

 the same whether we believe the material world to exist or not to exist ; 

 consequently, that our pleasant or painful feelings are also the same ; and 

 therefore that our conduct, which depends on our feelings and perceptions, 

 must be the same whether we beheve or disbelieve the existence of matter." 



The more we reflect on the native vigour and aculeness of Bishop 

 Berkeley's mind, as well as upon his extensive information and learning, 

 the more we must feel astonished that he could for one moment be serious 

 in the profession of so wild and chimerical a creed. And to those who 

 are not acquainted with the subject it may perhaps appear impossible for 

 the utmost stretch of human ingenuity to push such a revery any farther. 



To the possession of such ingenuity, however, \he celebrated author 

 of the " Treatise on Human Nature," is fairly and fully entitled. This 

 notable performance, though published anonymously, is well known to 

 be the production of Mr. Hume ; and though, in the Essays to which his 

 name appears, he makes some scruple of acknowledging it, and hints at 

 its containing a few points which he subsequently thought erroneous, he 

 maintains, in his avowed volumes, the same principles and the conse- 

 quences of those principles so generally, that it is difficult to understand 

 what errors he would wish the world to suppose he had ever retracted. 



In mounting into the subhme regions of metaphysical absurdity. Bishop 

 Berkeley furnished him with the ladder ; but as I have already hinted, 

 Hume ascended it higher, and, consequently, in his own opinion, had a 

 more correct and extensive view of the airy scene before him. 



If, said he, there be nothing in nature but mind and the perceptions of 

 mind,— perceptions diversified, indeed, by being sometimes stronger and 

 sometimes weaker, and which may hence be properly distinguished by 

 the names of impressions and ideas, — how do we know that we possess 

 a mind any more than that we possess a body, which no reasonable man 

 or philosopher can possibly think of contending for ? How do we know 

 that there is any thing more than impressions and ideas ? This is the ut- 

 most we can know ; and even this we cannot know to a certainty : for 

 nobody but fools will pretend certainly to know or to believe any thing. 

 These ideas and impressions follow each other, and are therefore con- 

 joined, but we have no proof that there is any necessary connexion be- 

 tween them. They are " a bundle of perceptions that succeed each 

 other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and 



Tr^iat. of H'lman Nat. vol. i. p. 438. &r. 



