for you know not what reason,
to you know not what purpose. Can this be paralleled in any art or
science, any sect or profession of men? Or is there anything so
barefacedly groundless and unreasonable to be met with even in the lowest
of common conversation? But, perhaps you will still say, Matter may
exist; though at the same time you neither know WHAT IS MEANT by
MATTER, or by its EXISTENCE. This indeed is surprising, and the more
so because it is altogether voluntary and of your own head, you not
being led to it by any one reason; for I challenge you to shew me that
thing in nature which needs Matter to explain or account for it.

HYL. THE REALITY of things cannot be maintained without supposing the
existence of Matter. And is not this, think you, a good reason why I
should be earnest in its defence?

PHIL. The reality of things! What things? sensible or intelligible?

HYL. Sensible things.

PHIL. My glove for example?

HYL. That, or any other thing perceived by the senses.

PHIL. But to fix on some particular thing. Is it not a sufficient
evidence to me of the existence of this GLOVE, that I see it, and feel
it, and wear it? Or, if this will not do, how is it possible I should be
assured of the reality of this thing, which I actually see in this place,
by supposing that some unknown thing, which I never did or can see,
exists after an unknown manner, in an unknown place, or in no place at
all? How can the supposed reality of that which is intangible be a proof
that anything tangible really exists? Or, of that which is invisible,
that any visible thing, or, in general of anything which is
imperceptible, that a perceptible exists? Do but explain this and I shall
think nothing too hard for you.

HYL. Upon the whole, I am content to own the existence of matter is
highly improbable; but the direct and absolute impossibility of it does
not appear to me.

PHIL. But granting Matter to be possible, yet, upon that account
merely, it can have no more claim to existence than a golden mountain, or
a centaur.

HYL. I acknowledge it; but still you do not deny it is possible; and
that which is possible, for aught you know, may actually exist.

PHIL. I deny it to be possible; and have, if I mistake not,
evidently proved, from your own concessions, that it is not. In the
common sense of the word MATTER, is there any more implied than an
extended, solid, figured, moveable substance, existing without the mind?
An