us to acknowledge.

HYL. I think I understand you very clearly; and own the proof you give
of a Deity seems no less evident than it is surprising. But, allowing
that God is the supreme and universal Cause of an things, yet, may there
not be still a Third Nature besides Spirits and Ideas? May we not admit a
subordinate and limited cause of our ideas? In a word, may there not for
all that be MATTER?

PHIL. How often must I inculcate the same thing? You allow the things
immediately perceived by sense to exist nowhere without the mind; but
there is nothing perceived by sense which is not perceived immediately:
therefore there is nothing sensible that exists without the mind. The
Matter, therefore, which you still insist on is something intelligible, I
suppose; something that may be discovered by reason, and not by sense.

HYL. You are in the right.

PHIL. Pray let me know what reasoning your belief of Matter is grounded
on; and what this Matter is, in your present sense of it.

HYL. I find myself affected with various ideas, whereof I know I am not
the cause; neither are they the cause of themselves, or of one another,
or capable of subsisting by themselves, as being altogether inactive,
fleeting, dependent beings. They have therefore SOME cause distinct
from me and them: of which I pretend to know no more than that it is THE
CAUSE OF MY IDEAS. And this thing, whatever it be, I call Matter.

PHIL. Tell me, Hylas, hath every one a liberty to change the current
proper signification attached to a common name in any language? For
example, suppose a traveller should tell you that in a certain country
men pass unhurt through the fire; and, upon explaining himself, you found
he meant by the word fire that which others call WATER. Or, if he
should assert that there are trees that walk upon two legs, meaning men
by the term TREES. Would you think this reasonable?

HYL. No; I should think it very absurd. Common custom is the standard
of propriety in language. And for any man to affect speaking improperly
is to pervert the use of speech, and can never serve to a better purpose
than to protract and multiply disputes, where there is no difference in
opinion.

PHIL. And doth not MATTER, in the common current acceptation of the
word, signify an extended, solid, moveable, unthinking, inactive
Substance?

HYL. It doth.

PHIL. And, hath it not been made evident that no SUCH substance can
possibly exist? And, though it s