and span too, we may say, of one man's intellect, capacious as his undoubtedly was—prevented him doing for himself.
We shall admit, then, that Berkeley holds that matter has no existence independently of mind—that mind, if entirely removed, would involve in its downfall the absolute annihilation of matter. And admitting this, we think, at the same time, that we can afford a perfectly satisfactory explanation of so strange and difficult a paradox, and resolve a knot which Berkeley was the first to loosen, but which he certainly did not explicitly untie. The question is: supposing ourselves away or annihilated, would the external world continue to exist as heretofore—or would it vanish into nonentity? But the terms of this question involve a preliminary question, which must first of all be disposed of. Mark what these terms are; they are comprised in the words, "supposing ourselves away or annihilated." But can we suppose ourselves away or annihilated? If we can—then we promise to proceed at once to give a categorical answer to the question just put. But if we cannot—then the prime condition of the question not being purified, the question itself has not been intelligibly asked; and therefore it cannot expect to receive a rational or intelligible answer. Should this be found to be the case, it will be obvious that we have been imposing upon ourselves, and have only mistakenly imagined ourselves to be asking a question which in truth we are not asking.
Can we, then, conceive ourselves removed or annihilated? is this thought a possible or conceivable supposition? Let us try it by the test of experience, by hypothetically answering the original question, in the first place, in the affirmative, and by saying that, although we conceive ourselves and all percipient beings annihilated, still the great universe of matter would maintain its place as firmly and as faithfully as before. We believe, then, that were there no eye actually present to behold them, the sky would be as bright, and the grass as green, as if they were gazed upon by ten million witnesses: that, though there were no ear present to hear them, the thunder would roar as loudly, and the sea sound as tempestuously as before; and that the firm-set earth, though now deserted by man, would remain as solid as when she resisted the pressure of all the generations of her children. But do we not see, that, in holding this belief, we have violated, at the very outset, the essential conditions of our question? We bound ourselves to annihilate the percipient in thought, to keep him ideally excluded from the scene, and having done this, we professed ourselves ready to believe and maintain that the universe would preserve its place and discharge its functions precisely the same as heretofore. But in thinking of the bright sky, and of the green grass, and of the loud thunder, and of the solid earth, we have not kept him excluded from the scene, but have brought back in thought the very percipient being whom we supposed, but most erroneously supposed, we had abstracted from his place in the creation. For what is this brightness and this greenness but an ideal vision, which cannot be thought of unless man's eyesight be incarnated with it in one inseparable conception? Nature herself, we may say, has so beaten up together sight and colour, that man's faculty of abstraction is utterly powerless to dissolve the charmed union. The two (supposed) elements are not two, but only one, for they cannot be separated in thought even by the craft of the subtlest analysis. It is God's synthesis, and man cannot analyze it. And further, what is the loud thunder, and what is the sonnding sea, without the ideal restoration of the hearing being whom we professed to have thought of as annihilated? And finally, what is the solidity of the rocks and mountains but that which is conceived to respond to the touch and tread of some human percipient, ideally restored to traverse their unyielding and everlasting heights?
Perhaps the reader may here imagine that we are imposing a quibble both on ourselves and him, and that though we may not be able to conceive ourselves ideally removed, yet that we are perfectly able to conceive ourselves actually removed out of the universe, leaving its existence unaltered and entire; but a small degree of reflection may satisfy him that this distinction will not help him in the least. For, what is this universe which the reader, after conceiving himself, as he thinks, actually away from it, has left behind him unmutilated and entire? We ask him to tell us something about it. But when he attempts to do so, he will
