things that we do not know what the true or natural qualities of each object are.

2. The proof of the non-existence of the primary qualities or of matter altogether, as inconceivable by the mind, goes upon the supposition that what is different cannot be the same. "An idea," says Berkeley, "can be like nothing but an idea, a perception like nothing but a perception." But it might be proved in this manner that a print cannot resemble a picture, because that which has colour cannot be represented by any thing without colour. That as far as our ideas are perceptions they do not resemble any thing in matter is true, but no one ever supposed that in this respect there was any resemblance between them, or that matter thought. That they cannot be alike in any thing does not seem to me proved by this mode of reasoning: for that our ideas of things are not mere perceptions is evident from this, that they are different among themselves, that is, have other distinguishing qualities besides being perceived.

3. Berkeley's argument against the existence of matter not merely as the object or archetype, but as the cause of our sensations, is founded on the notion that we have a right to reject every general conclusion in which there is the least flaw or difficulty. Common sense is brought to

the bar, like an old offender, and condemned upon the slightest shadow of evidence. If the vulgar system is vulnerable in any part, it is taken for granted that it ought to be discarded, to make room for a perfectly rational and philosophical account, the sufficiency of the understanding being never once doubted. But all this severe logic and scrutiny into the perfect connexion of our ideas vanishes, when the author comes to explain the cause of our external impressions, or to find a substitute for matter. This, he says, is God or an all-powerful spirit, and yet he affirms that we have no more idea of spirit than of matter, and consequently the one ought upon this theory to pass for a nonentity as much as the other.

"We perceive a continual succession of ideas, some are anew excited, others are changed or totally disappear. There is therefore some cause of those ideas, whereon they depend, and which produces and changes them. That this cause cannot be any quality or idea or combination of ideas, is clear from what has been said. It must therefore be a substance, but it has been shewn that there is no corporeal or material substance. It remains therefore that the cause of ideas is an incorporeal active substance or spirit.

"A spirit is one simple, undivided, active

being: as it perceives ideas, it is called the understanding, and as it produces or otherwise operates about them, it is called the will. Hence there can be no idea formed of a soul or spirit. For all ideas whatever being passive and inert, they cannot represent unto us by way of image or likeness that which acts. Such is the nature of spirit or that which acts, that it cannot be itself perceived, but only by the effects which it produceth. If any man shall doubt of the truth of what is here delivered, let him but reflect and try if he can frame the idea of any power or active being. A little attention will make it plain to any one, that to have an idea which shall be like that active principle of motion and change of ideas, is absolutely impossible." That is to say, matter is here excluded from being the cause or in any way the occasion of our ideas, because we know not what it is, and the inference is, that the cause of our ideas must be spirit, of which we are equally ignorant. The reasoning might have been reversed. But it is thus that philosophy seems to be in general nothing else but "reason pandering will." The literal conclusion from the foregoing argument is, that there is nothing in the universe but one-self, nor even that, but only the present idea: all other words must signify nothing.

To return to Mr Locke. He has treated on the same question in the second volume, but without advancing any thing remarkable on it, and it is the only place in which he loses his temper, and substitutes ridicule for argument.

In the chapter on Perception, there are some observations on the manner in which our judgments alter the impressions of sensible objects, which are well worth notice, and show that the author was well acquainted with what may be called the practical processes of the human mind.

He says, p. 130, "We are farther to consider concerning perception, that the ideas we receive by sensation are often in grown people altered by the judgment without our taking notice of it. When we set before our eyes a round globe of any uniform colour, e. g. gold, alabaster, or jet, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in our mind is of a flat circle, variously shadowed with several degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes. But we having by use been accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us, what alterations are made in the reflections of light by the difference of the sensible figures of bodies, the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the appearances into their causes;

so that from that which truly is variety of shadow or colour, collecting the figure, it makes it pass for a mark of figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure and an uniform colour, when the idea we receive from thence is only a plane variously coloured; as is evident in painting. To which purpose I shall here insert a problem of that very ingenious and studious promoter of real knowledge, the learned and worthy Mr Molineux, which he was pleased to send me in a letter some months since and it is this: Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal and nigh of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt the one and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere. Suppose then the cube and sphere placed on a table, and the blind man made to see: Quere, whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the globe, which the cube?' To which the acute and judicious proposer answers, No. For though he has obtained the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his touch, yet he has not yet attained the experience that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so; or that a protuberant angle in the cube that pressed his