e doubted of. Our thoughts,
then, are unquestionably real existences. They may be delusive, but they
cannot possibly be fictitious.

We may perhaps hereafter have occasion to note how Descartes, having
thus secured one firm foothold and solid resting-place, outwent the
farthest stretch of Archimedean ambition by using it, not as a fulcrum
from whence to move the world, but as a site for logical foundations
whereon he might, if he had persevered, have raised the superstructure
of an universe at once mental and material.[32] Intermediately, however,
we have to observe how two pre-eminent disciples of the Cartesian
school have perverted the fundamental proposition of their great master
by treating its converse as its synonyme. Descartes having demonstrated
that all thought is existence, Bishop Berkeley and Professor Huxley
infer that all existence is thought. So says the Professor in so many
words, and to precisely the same effect is the more diffuse language of
the Bishop, where, speaking of 'all the choir of heaven and furniture of
earth, of all the bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world,'
he declares that their _esse_ is _percipi_, that their 'being' consists
in their being 'perceived or known,' and that unless they were actually
perceived by, or existed in, some created or uncreate mind, they could
not possibly exist at all.

The reasoning in support of these assertions is in substance as
follows:--We know nothing of any material object except by the
sensations which it produces in our minds. What we are accustomed to
call the _qualities_ of an object are nothing else but the mental
sensations of various kinds which the object produces within us. Some of
these qualities, such as extension, figure, solidity, motion, and
number, are classed as primary; others, as, for instance, smell, taste,
colour, sound, as secondary. Now that these latter have no existence
apart from mind can readily be shown thus. If I prick my finger with a
needle, the pain I suffer in consequence is surely in myself, not in the
needle, nor anywhere else but in myself. If an orange be placed on my
open hand, my sensation of touching it is in myself, not in the orange.
If the orange could feel, what it would feel would be a hand, while what
I am feeling is an orange. Nor are my sensations of pain and touch
merely confined to myself; they are also confined to a particular part
of myself, viz., to the brain, the seat of my consciousness, w