A Philosopher's Ruminations

  At the beginning of the Third Dialogue responding to Hylas’s worries that in Berkeley’s philosophy there is no chance we can know the real nature of things because we can know only appearances and so scepticism seems inevitable, Berkeley says:   “….and is it not evident you are led into all these extravagancies by the belief of material substance? These make you dream of those unknown natures in everything. It is this occasions your distinguishing between the reality and sensible appearances of things. ”   And further he says:   “That a thing should be really perceived by my senses and at the same time not really exist, is to me a plain contradiction; since I cannot prescind or abstract, even in thought, the existence of a sensible thing from its being perceived. Wood, stones, fire, water, flesh, iron and the like things I name and discourse of, are things I know. And I should not have known them, but that I perceived them by my senses; and things perceived by the senses