onsistent with allowing to
thinking rational beings, in the production of motions, the use of
limited powers, ultimately indeed derived from God, but immediately under
the direction of their own wills, which is sufficient to entitle them to
all the guilt of their actions.

HYL. But the denying Matter, Philonous, or corporeal Substance; there
is the point. You can never persuade me that this is not repugnant to the
universal sense of mankind. Were our dispute to be determined by most
voices, I am confident you would give up the point, without gathering the
votes.

PHIL. I wish both our opinions were fairly stated and submitted to the
judgment of men who had plain common sense, without the prejudices of a
learned education. Let me be represented as one who trusts his senses,
who thinks he knows the things he sees and feels, and entertains no
doubts of their existence; and you fairly set forth with all your doubts,
your paradoxes, and your scepticism about you, and I shall willingly
acquiesce in the determination of any indifferent person. That there is
no substance wherein ideas can exist beside spirit is to me evident. And
that the objects immediately perceived are ideas, is on all hands agreed.
And that sensible qualities are objects immediately perceived no one can
deny. It is therefore evident there can be no SUBSTRATUM of those
qualities but spirit; in which they exist, not by way of mode or
property, but as a thing perceived in that which perceives it. I deny
therefore that there is ANY UNTHINKING-SUBSTRATUM of the objects of
sense, and IN THAT ACCEPTATION that there is any material substance.
But if by MATERIAL SUBSTANCE is meant only SENSIBLE BODY, THAT
which is seen and felt (and the unphilosophical part of the world, I dare
say, mean no more)--then I am more certain of matter's existence than you
or any other philosopher pretend to be. If there be anything which makes
the generality of mankind averse from the notions I espouse, it is
a misapprehension that I deny the reality of sensible things. But, as it
is you who are guilty of that, and not I, it follows that in truth their
aversion is against your notions and not mine. I do therefore assert that
I am as certain as of my own being, that there are bodies or corporeal
substances (meaning the things I perceive by my senses); and that,
granting this, the bulk of mankind will take no thought about, nor think
themselves at all concerned in the fate of those unkn