nfolded, he professes his purpose to be to
remove "the grounds of scepticism, atheism and irreligion." Berkeley was
a sincere Christian, and a man of the most ingenuous dispositions. Pope,
in the Epilogue to his Satires, does not hesitate to ascribe to him
"every virtue under heaven." He was for twenty years a prelate of the
Protestant church. And, though his personal sentiments were in the
highest degree philanthropical and amiable, yet, in his most diffusive
production, entitled The Minute Philosopher, he treats "those who
are called Free Thinkers" with a scorn and disdain, scarcely to be
reconciled with the spirit of Christian meekness.

There are examples however, especially in the fields of controversy,
where an adventurous speculatist has been known to lay down premises and
principles, from which inferences might be fairly deduced, incompatible
with the opinions entertained by him who delivered them. It may
therefore be no unprofitable research to enquire how far the creed of
the non-existence of matter is to be regarded as in truth and reality
countenancing the inference which has just been recited.

The persons then, who refine with Berkeley upon the system of things so
far, as to deny that there is any such thing as matter in the sense in
which it is understood by the writers on natural philosophy, proceed
on the ground of affirming that we have no reason to believe that the
causes of our sensations have an express resemblance to the sensations
themselves(81). That which gives us a sensation of colour is not itself
coloured: and the same may be affirmed of the sensations of hot and
cold, of sweet and bitter, and of odours offensive or otherwise. The
immaterialist proceeds to say, that what we call matter has been strewn
to be so exceedingly porous, that, for any thing we know, all the solid
particles in the universe might be contained in a nutshell, that there
is no such thing in the external world as actual contact, and that no
two particles of matter were ever so near to each other, but that they
might be brought nearer, if a sufficient force could be applied for
that purpose. From these premises it seems to follow with sufficient
evidence, that the causes of our sensations, so far as the material
universe is concerned, bear no express resemblance to the sensations
themselves.

(81) See above, Essay XXI.

How then does the question stand with relation to mind? Are those
persons who deny the existen