Berkeley, George
"Three Dialogues Between Hylas And Philonous"
. Methinks I apprehend your meaning.
. It is your opinion the ideas we perceive by our
senses are not real things, but images or copies of them. Our
knowledge, therefore, is no farther real than as our ideas are
the true of those . But, as these
supposed originals are in themselves unknown, it is impossible to
know how far our ideas resemble them; or whether they resemble
them at all. We cannot, therefore, be sure we have any real
knowledge. Farther, as our ideas are perpetually varied, without
any change in the supposed real things, it necessarily follows
they cannot all be true copies of them: or, if some are and
others are not, it is impossible to distinguish the former from
the latter. And this plunges us yet deeper in uncertainty. Again,
when we consider the point, we cannot conceive how any idea, or
anything like an idea, should have an absolute existence out of a
mind: nor consequently, according to you, how there should be any
real thing in nature. The result of ;all which is that we are
thrown into the most hopeless and abandoned scepticism.
Pages:
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165