is an innovation in knowledge:  and, if all such innovations had been forbidden, men would have made a notable progress in the arts and sciences.  But it is none of my business to plead for novelties and paradoxes.  That the qualities we perceive are not on the objects:  that we must not believe our senses:  that we know nothing of the real nature of things, and can never be assured even of their existence:  that real colours and sounds are nothing but certain unknown figures and motions:  that motions are in themselves neither swift nor slow:  that there are in bodies absolute extensions, without any particular magnitude or figure:  that a thing stupid, thoughtless, and inactive, operates on a spirit:  that the least particle of a body contains innumerable extended parts:—­these are the novelties, these are the strange notions which shock the genuine uncorrupted judgment of all mankind; and being once admitted, embarrass the mind with endless doubts and difficulties.  And it is against these and the like innovations I endeavour to vindicate Common Sense.  It is true, in doing this, I may perhaps be obliged to use some ambages, and ways of speech not common.  But, if my notions are once thoroughly understood, that which is most singular in them will, in effect, be found to amount to no more than this.—­that it is absolutely impossible, and a plain contradiction, to suppose any unthinking Being should exist without being perceived by a Mind.  And, if this notion be singular, it is a shame it should be so, at this time of day, and in a Christian country.

HYL.  As for the difficulties other opinions may be liable to, those are out of the question.  It is your business to defend your own opinion.  Can anything be plainer than that you are for changing all things into ideas?  You, I say, who are not ashamed to charge me with scepticism.  This is so plain, there is no denying it.

Phil.  You mistake me.  I am not for changing things into ideas, but rather ideas into things; since those immediate objects of perception, which, according to you, are only appearances of things, I take to be the real things themselves.

HYL.  Things!  You may pretend what you please; but it is certain you leave us nothing but the empty forms of things, the outside only which strikes the senses.

Phil.  What you call the empty forms and outside of things seem to me the very things themselves.  Nor are they empty or incomplete, otherwise than upon your supposition—­that Matter is an essential part of all corporeal things.  We both, therefore, agree in this, that we perceive only sensible forms:  but herein we differ—­you will have them to be empty appearances, I, real beings.  In short, you do not trust your senses, I do.

HYL.  You say you believe your senses; and seem to applaud yourself that in this you agree with the vulgar.  According to you, therefore, the true nature of a thing is discovered by the senses.  If so, whence comes that disagreement?  Why is not the same figure, and other sensible qualities, perceived all manner of ways? and why should we use a microscope the better to discover the true nature of a body, if it were discoverable to the naked eye?