perceived, then there is matter:—­This distinction gives it quite another turn; and men will come into your notions with small difficulty, when they are proposed in that manner.  For, after all, the controversy about matter in the strict acceptation of it, lies altogether between you and the philosophers:  whose principles, I acknowledge, are not near so natural, or so agreeable to the common sense of mankind, and Holy Scripture, as yours.  There is nothing we either desire or shun but as it makes, or is apprehended to make, some part of our happiness or misery.  But what hath happiness or misery, joy or grief, pleasure or pain, to do with Absolute Existence; or with unknown entities, abstracted from all relation to us?  It is evident, things regard us only as they are pleasing or displeasing:  and they can please or displease only so far forth as they are perceived.  Farther, therefore, we are not concerned; and thus far you leave things as you found them.  Yet still there is something new in this doctrine.  It is plain, I do not now think with the Philosophers; nor yet altogether with the vulgar.  I would know how the case stands in that respect; precisely, what you have added to, or altered in my former notions.

Phil.  I do not pretend to be a setter-up of new notions.  My endeavours tend only to unite, and place in a clearer light, that truth which was before shared between the vulgar and the philosophers:—­the former being of opinion, that those things they immediately perceive are the real things; and the latter, that the things immediately perceived are ideas, which exist only in the mind.  Which two notions put together, do, in effect, constitute the substance of what I advance.

HYL.  I have been a long time distrusting my senses:  methought I saw things by a dim light and through false glasses.  Now the glasses are removed and a new light breaks in upon my under standing.  I am clearly convinced that I see things in their native forms, and am no longer in pain about their unknown natures or absolute existence.  This is the state I find myself in at present; though, indeed, the course that brought me to it I do not yet thoroughly comprehend.  You set out upon the same principles that Academics, Cartesians, and the like sects usually do; and for a long time it looked as if you were advancing their philosophical Scepticism:  but, in the end, your conclusions are directly opposite to theirs.

Phil.  You see, Hylas, the water of yonder fountain, how it is forced upwards, in a round column, to a certain height; at which it breaks, and falls back into the basin from whence it rose:  its ascent, as well as descent, proceeding from the same uniform law or principle of gravitation. just so, the same Principles which, at first view, lead to Scepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to Common Sense.