by sense. But what reason can induce us
to believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from what we
perceive, since the very patrons of Matter themselves do not pretend
there is any _necessary_ connexion betwixt them and our ideas? I say
it is granted on all hands--and what happens in dreams, frenzies, and
the like, puts it beyond dispute--that it is possible we might be
affected with all the ideas we have now, though there were no bodies
existing without resembling them. Hence, it is evident the supposition
of external bodies is not necessary for the producing our ideas; since
it is granted they are produced sometimes, and might possibly be
produced always in the same order we see them in at present, without
their concurrence.

* * * * * *

'In short, if there were external bodies, it is impossible we should
ever come to know it; and if there were not, we might have the very
same reasons to think there were that we have now. Suppose--what no
one can deny possible--an intelligence _without the help of external
bodies_, to be affected with the same train of sensations or ideas that
you are, imprinted in the same order and with like vividness in his
mind. I ask whether that intelligence hath not all the reason to
believe the existence of corporeal substances, represented by his
ideas, and exciting them in his mind, that you can possibly have for
believing the same thing? Of this there can be no {14} question--which
one consideration were enough to make any reasonable person suspect the
strength of whatever arguments he may think himself to have, for the
existence of bodies without the mind.'[4]

Do you say that in that case the tables and chairs must be supposed to
disappear the moment we all leave the room? It is true that we do
commonly think of the tables and chairs as remaining, even when there
is no one there to see or touch them. But that only means, Berkeley
explains, that if we or any one else were to come back into the room,
we should perceive them. Moreover, even in thinking of them as things
which might be perceived under certain conditions, they have entered
our minds and so proclaimed their ideal or mind-implying character. To
prove that things exist without the mind we should have to conceive of
things as unconceived or unthought of. And that is a feat which no one
has ever yet succeeded in accomplishing.

Here is Berkeley's own answer to the objection: