That Berkeley at the age of twenty-five, and educated chiefly by Locke, had fathomed or even entertained all these questions was hardly to be looked for. How far he had gone may be gathered by a study of the sequel of his book of _Principles_.
ii. Objections to the New Principles answered (sect. 34-84).
The supposed Objections, with Berkeley's answers, may be thus interpreted:--
_First objection._ (Sect. 34-40.) The preceding Principles banish all substantial realities, and substitute a universe of chimeras.
_Answer._ This objection is a play upon the popular meaning of the word "idea." That name is appropriate to the phenomena presented in sense, because they become concrete realities only in the experience of living Spirit; and so it is not confined to the chimeras of individual fancy, which may misrepresent the real ideas of sense that are presented in the natural system independently of our will.
_Second objection._ (Sect. 41.) The preceding Principles abolish the distinction between Perception and Imagination--between imagining one's self burnt and actually being burnt.
_Answer._ Real fire differs from fancied fire: as real pain does from fancied pain; yet no one supposes that real pain any more than imaginary pain can exist unfelt by a sentient intelligence.
_Third objection._ (Sect. 42-44.) We actually _see_ sensible things existing at a distance from our bodies. Now, whatever is seen existing at a distance must be seen as existing external to us in our bodies, which contradicts the foregoing Principles.
_Answer._ Distance, or outness, is not visible. It is a conception which is suggested gradually, by our experience of the connexion between visible colours and certain visual sensations that accompany seeing, on the one hand, and our tactual experience, on the other--as was proved in the _Essay on Vision_, in which the ideality of the _visible_ world is demonstrated(470).
_Fourth objection._ (Sect. 45-48.) It follows from the New Principles, that the material world must be undergoing continuous annihilation and recreation in the innumerable sentient experiences in which it becomes real.
_Answer_. According to the New Principles a thing may be realised in the sense-experience of _other_ minds, during intervals of its perception by _my_ mind; for the Principles do not affirm dependence only on this or that mind, but on a living Mind. If this implies a constant creation of the material world, the conception of the universe as in a state of constant creation is not new, and it signally displays Divine Providence.