So Matter comes to nothing. What think you,
Hylas, is not this a fair summary of your whole proceeding?
. Be that as it will, yet I still insist upon it, that
our not being able to conceive a thing is no argument against its
existence.
. That from a cause, effect, operation, sign, or other
circumstance, there may reasonably be inferred the existence of a
thing not immediately perceived; and that it were absurd for any
man to argue against the existence of that thing, from his having
no direct and positive notion of it, I freely own. But, where
there is nothing of all this; where neither reason nor revelation
induces us to believe the existence of a thing; where we have not
even a relative notion of it; where an abstraction is made from
perceiving and being perceived, from Spirit and idea: lastly,
where there is not so much as the most inadequate or faint idea
pretended to -- I will not indeed thence conclude against the
reality of any notion, or existence of anything; but my inference
shall be, that you mean nothing at all; that you employ words to
no manner of purpose, without any design or signification
whatsoever.
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