But, if sensible things are the real things, the real moon, for instance, it is alleged, can be only a foot in diameter. It is maintained, in opposition to this, that the term real moon is applied only to what is an inference from the moon, one foot in diameter, which we immediately perceive; and that the former is a part of our previsive or mediate inference, due to what is perceived.
The dispute, after all, is merely verbal, it is next objected; and, since all parties refer the data of the senses and the things which they compose to a Power external to each finite percipient, why not call that Power, whatever it may be, Matter, and not Spirit? The reply is, that this would be an absurd misapplication of language.
But may we not, it is next suggested, assume the possibility of a third nature—neither idea nor Spirit? Not, replies Philonous, if we are to keep to the rule of having meaning in the words we use. We know what is meant by a spirit, for each of us has immediate experience of one; and we know what is meant by sense-ideas and [pg 362] sensible things, for we have immediate and mediate experience of them. But we have no immediate, and therefore can have no mediate, experience of what is neither perceived by our senses, nor realised in inward consciousness: moreover, “entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.”
Again, this conception of the realities implies, it is said, imperfection, because sentient experience, in God. This objection, it is answered, implies a confusion between being actually sentient and merely conceiving sensations, and employing them, as God does, as signs for expressing His conceptions to our minds.
Further, the negation of independent powerful Matter seems to annihilate the explanations of physical phenomena given by natural philosophers. But, to be assured that it does not, we have only to recollect what physical explanation means—that it is the reference of an apparently irregular phenomenon to some acknowledged general rule of co-existence or succession among sense-ideas. It is interpretation of sense-signs.
Is the proposed ideal Realism summarily condemned as a novelty? It can be answered, that all discoveries are novelties at first; and moreover that this one is not so much a novelty as a deeper interpretation of the common faith.
Yet it seems, at any rate, it is said, to change real things into mere ideas. Here consider on the contrary what we mean when we speak of sensible things as real. The changing appearances of which we are percipient in sense, united objectively in their cosmical order, are what is truly meant by the realities of sense.
But this reality is inconsistent with the continued identity of material things, it is complained, and also with the fact that different persons can be percipient of the same thing. Not so, Berkeley explains, when we attend to the true meaning of the word same, and dismiss from [pg 363] our thoughts a supposed abstract idea of identity which is nonsensical.
But some may exclaim against the supposition that the material world exists in mind, regarding this as an implied assertion that mind is extended, and therefore material. This proceeds, it is replied, on forgetfulness of what “existence in mind” means. It is intended to express the fact that matter is real in being an objective appearance of which a living mind is sensible.
Lastly, is not the Mosaic account of the creation of Matter inconsistent with the perpetual dependence of Matter for its reality upon percipient Spirit? It is answered that the conception of creation being dependent on the existence of finite minds is in perfect harmony with the Mosaic account: it is what is seen and felt, not what is unseen and unfelt, that is created.