Phil.  Tell me, Hylas, hath every one a liberty to change the current proper signification attached to a common name in any language?  For example, suppose a traveller should tell you that in a certain country men pass unhurt through the fire; and, upon explaining himself, you found he meant by the word fire that which others call water.  Or, if he should assert that there are trees that walk upon two legs, meaning men by the term trees.  Would you think this reasonable?

HYL.  No; I should think it very absurd.  Common custom is the standard of propriety in language.  And for any man to affect speaking improperly is to pervert the use of speech, and can never serve to a better purpose than to protract and multiply disputes, where there is no difference in opinion.

Phil.  And doth not matter, in the common current acceptation of the word, signify an extended, solid, moveable, unthinking, inactive Substance?

HYL.  It doth.

Phil.  And, hath it not been made evident that no such substance can possibly exist?  And, though it should be allowed to exist, yet how can that which is inactive be a cause; or that which is unthinking be a cause of thought?  You may, indeed, if you please, annex to the word matter a contrary meaning to what is vulgarly received; and tell me you understand by it, an unextended, thinking, active being, which is the cause of our ideas.  But what else is this than to play with words, and run into that very fault you just now condemned with so much reason?  I do by no means find fault with your reasoning, in that you collect a cause from the phenomena:  But I deny that the cause deducible by reason can properly be termed Matter.

HYL.  There is indeed something in what you say.  But I am afraid you do not thoroughly comprehend my meaning.  I would by no means be thought to deny that God, or an infinite Spirit, is the Supreme Cause of all things.  All I contend for is, that, subordinate to the Supreme Agent, there is a cause of a limited and inferior nature, which concurs in the production of our ideas, not by any act of will, or spiritual efficiency, but by that kind of action which belongs to Matter, viz.  motion.

Phil.  I find you are at every turn relapsing into your old exploded conceit, of a moveable, and consequently an extended, substance, existing without the mind.  What!  Have you already forgotten you were convinced; or are you willing I should repeat what has been said on that head?  In truth this is not fair dealing in you, still to suppose the being of that which you have so often acknowledged to have no being.  But, not to insist farther on what has been so largely handled, I ask whether all your ideas are not perfectly passive and inert, including nothing of action in them.

HYL.  They are.