, "I cannot forget the things about me when I shut my eyes: I know
and almost feel their persistent presence, and I always find them again,
upon trial, just as they were before, or just in that condition to which
the operation of natural causes would have brought them in my absence.
If I believe they remain and suffer steady and imperceptible
transformation, I know what to expect, and the event does not deceive
me; but if I had to resolve upon action before knowing whether the
conditions for action were to exist or no, I should never understand
what sort of a world I lived in."

"Ah, my child," the good Bishop would reply, "you misunderstand me. You
may indeed, nay, you must, live and think _as if_ everything remained
independently real. That is part of your education for heaven, which God
in his goodness provides for you in this life. He will send into your
soul at every moment the impressions needed to verify your necessary
hypotheses and support your humble and prudent expectations. Only you
must not attribute that constancy to the things themselves which is due
to steadfastness in the designs of Providence. _Think and act_ as if a
material world existed, but do not for a moment _believe_ it to exist."

[Sidenote: Vain "realities" and trustworthy "fictions."]

With this advice, coming reassuringly from the combined forces of
scepticism and religion, we may leave the embryonic mind to its own
devices, satisfied that even according to the most malicious
psychologists its first step toward the comprehension of experience is
one it may congratulate itself on having taken and which, for the
present at least, it is not called upon to retrace. The Life of Reason
is not concerned with speculation about unthinkable and gratuitous
"realities"; it seeks merely to attain those conceptions which are
necessary and appropriate to man in his acting and thinking. The first
among these, underlying all arts and philosophies alike, is the
indispensable conception of permanent external objects, forming in their
congeries, shifts, and secret animation the system and life of nature.

NOTE--There is a larger question raised by Berkeley's
arguments which I have not attempted to discuss here, namely,
whether knowledge is possible at all, and whether any mental
representation can be supposed to inform us about anything.
Berkeley of course assumed this power in that he continued to
believe in God, in other spiri