question; without which your objections {261} will always be wide
of the mark, and, instead of mine, may possibly be directed (as
more than once they have been) against your own notions.

     . I must needs own, Philonous, nothing seems to have
kept me from agreeing with you more than this same <mistaking the
question>. In denying Matter,. at first, glimpse I am tempted to
imagine you deny the things we see and feel: but, upon reflexion,
find there is no ground for it. What think you, therefore, of
retaining the name , and applying it to <sensible
things>? This may be done without any change in your sentiments:
and, believe me, it would be a means of reconciling them to some
persons who may be more shocked at an innovation in words than in
opinion.

     . With all my heart: retain the word , and
apply it to the objects of sense, if you please; provided you do
not attribute to them any subsistence distinct from their being
perceived. I shall never quarrel with you for an expression.
, or <material substance>, are terms introduced by
philosophers; and, as used by them, imply a sort of independency,
or a subsistence distinct from being perceived by a mind: but are
never used by common people; or, if ever, it is to signify the
immediate objects of sense. One would think, therefore, so long
as the names of all particular things, with the <terms sensible>,
, , , and the like, are retained, the
word  should be never missed in common talk. And in
philosophical discourses it seems the best way to leave it quite
out: since there is not, perhaps, any one thing that hath more
favoured and strengthened the depraved bent of the mind towards
Atheism than the use of that general confused term.

     . Well but, Philonous, since I am content to give up
the notion of an unthinking substance exterior to the mind, I
think you ought not to deny me the privilege of using the word
 as I please, and annexing it to a collection of sensible
qualities subsisting only in the mind. I freely own there is no
other substance, in a strict sense, than . But I have
been so long accustomed to the <term Matter> that I know not how
to part with it: to say, there is no  in the world, is
still shocking to me. Whereas to say -- There is no , if
by that term be meant an unthinking substance existing without
the mind; but if by  is meant some sensible thing, whose
existence consists in being perceived, then there is : --
 distinction gives it quite another turn; and men will come
into your notions with {262} small difficulty, when they are
proposed in that manner. For, after all, the controversy about
 in the strict acceptation of it, lies altogether between
you and the philosophers: whose principles, I acknowledge, are
not near so natural, or so agreeable to the common sense of
mankind, and Holy Scripture, as yours. There is nothing we either
desire or shun but as it makes, or is apprehended to make, some
part of our happiness or misery. But what hath happiness or
misery, joy or grief, pleasure or pain, to do with Absolute
Existence; or with unknown entities, <abstracted from dl relation
to us>? It is evident, things regard us only as they are pleasing
or displeasing: and they can please or displease only so far
forth as they are perceived. Farther, therefore, we are not
concerned; and thus far you leave things as you found them. Yet
still there is something new in this doctrine. It is plain, I do
not now think with the Philosophers; nor yet altogether with the
vulgar. I would know how the case stands in that respect;
precisely, what you have added to, or altered in my former
notions.

     . I do not pretend to be a setter-up of new notions.
My endeavours tend only to unite, and place in a clearer light,
that truth which was before shared between the vulgar and the
philosophers: -- the former being of opinion, that <those things
they immediately perceive are the real things>; and the latter,
that <the things immediately perceived are ideas>, <which exist
only in the mind>. Which two notions put together, do, in effect,
constitute the substance of what I advance.

     . I have been a long time distrusting my senses:
methought I saw things by a dim light and through false glasses.
Now the glasses are removed and a new light breaks in upon my
under standing. I am clearly convinced that I see things in their
native forms, and am no longer in pain about their <unknown
natures or absolute existence>. This is the state I find myself
in at present; though, indeed, the course that brought me to it I
do not yet thoroughly comprehend. You set out upon the same
principles that Academics, Cartesians, and the like sects usually
do; and for a long time it looked as if you were advancing their
philosophical Scepticism: but, in the end, your conclusions are
directly opposite to theirs.

     . You see, Hylas, the water of yonder fountain, how it
is forced upwards, in a round column, to a certain height; at
{263} which it breaks, and falls back into the basin from whence
it rose: its ascent, as well as descent, proceeding from the same
uniform law or principle of gravitation. just so, the same
Principles which, at first view, lead to Scepticism, pursued to a
certain point, bring men back to Common Sense.

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