re familiar with
matter and its movements than they are with a living spirit within them,
which feels, and thinks, and wills, and by means of which alone the
phenomena of external nature itself can become known to them? If they
receive the testimony of Perception as a sufficient proof of the
existence of Matter, why should they not also receive the still more
direct and immediate testimony of Consciousness as a sufficient proof of
the existence of Mind? Or, if they refuse the latter, and admit the
former, are they quite sure that, on their own partial principles, they
could offer any conclusive answer to the "Idealism" of Berkeley? That
ingenious and amiable prelate will tell them that "the objects of sense
cannot exist otherwise than _in a mind perceiving them_;" that "their
_esse_ is _percipi_, nor is it possible that they should have any
existence out of the minds, or thinking things, which perceive them;"
and that "all the choir of heaven and the furniture of the earth,--in a
word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have
not any subsistence without a mind."[162] Nay, others who are not
Idealists, but who believe equally in the existence of "mind" and
"matter," will tell them that Berkeley's arguments are conclusive, at
least to the extent of showing that the existence of "matter," as a
thing external to us, cannot be proved without presupposing the
existence of "mind." "For what," says Lord Brougham, "is this matter?
Whence do we derive any knowledge of it? How do we assure ourselves of
its existence? What evidence have we at all respecting either its being
or its qualities? We feel, or taste, or smell something; that is, we
have certain sensations, which make us conclude that something exists
beyond ourselves." ... "But what are our sensations? The feelings or
thoughts of our own minds. Then what we do is this: from certain ideas
in our minds, produced no doubt by, and connected with, our bodily
senses, but independent of and separate from them, we draw certain
conclusions by reasoning; and these conclusions are in favor of the
existence of something other than our sensations and our reasonings, and
other than that which experiences the sensations and makes the
reasonings, passive in the one case, active in the other. That something
is what we call--Mind. But plainly, whatever it is, we owe to it the
knowledge that matter exists; for that knowledge is gained by means of a
sensation or feel