type, where what is known is
directly presented; and, in conformity with this principle, being is to
be restricted to the content of the living pulses of experience.

[Sidenote: The Refutation of Material Substance.]

Sect. 129. Berkeley, then, beginning with the threefold world of
Descartes and of common-sense, proposes to apply Locke's theory of
knowledge to the discomfiture of corporeal nature. It was a radical
doctrine, because it meant for him and for his contemporaries the denial
of all finite objects outside the mind. But at the same time it meant a
restoration of the homogeneity of experience, the re-establishment of
the qualitative world of every-day living, and so had its basis of
appeal to common-sense. The encounter between Hylas, the advocate of the
traditional philosophy, and Philonous, who represents the author
himself, begins with an exchange of the charge of innovation.

_Hyl._ I am glad to find there was nothing in the accounts I
heard of you.

_Phil._ Pray, what were those?

_Hyl._ You were represented, in last night's conversation, as
one who maintained the most extravagant opinion that ever
entered into the mind of man, to wit, that there is no such
thing as _material substance_ in the world.

_Phil._ That there is no such thing as what _philosophers_
call _material substance_, I am seriously persuaded: but if I
were made to see anything absurd or sceptical in this, I
should then have the same reason to renounce this that I
imagine I have now to reject the contrary opinion.

_Hyl._ What! can anything be more fantastical, more repugnant
to Common-Sense, or a more manifest piece of Scepticism, than
to believe there is no such thing as _matter_?

_Phil._ Softly, good Hylas. What if it should prove that you,
who hold there is, are, by virtue of that opinion, a greater
sceptic, and maintain more paradoxes and repugnances to
Common-Sense, than I who believe no such thing?[276:7]

Philonous now proceeds with his case. Beginning by obtaining from Hylas
the admission that pleasure and pain are essentially relative and
subjective, he argues that sensations such as heat, since they are
inseparable from these feelings, must be similarly regarded. And he is
about to annex other qualities in turn to this core of subjectivity,
when Hylas enters a general demurrer:

"Hold, Philonous, I now see what it wa