"Treatise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Berkeley George)

name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example a certain
colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to
go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name
apple; other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a
book, and the like sensible things- which as they are pleasing or
disagreeable excite the passions of love, hatred, joy, grief, and so
forth.

2. But, besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of
knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives
them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining,
remembering, about them. This perceiving, active being is what I
call mind, spirit, soul, or myself. By which words I do not denote any
one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein,
they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived-
for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived.

3. That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by
the imagination, exist without the mind, is what everybody will allow.
And it seems no less evident that the various sensations or ideas
imprinted on the sense, however blended or combined together (that is,
whatever objects they compose), cannot exist otherwise than in a
mind perceiving them.- I think an intuitive knowledge may be
obtained of this by any one that shall attend to what is meant by
the term exists, when applied to sensible things. The table I write on
I say exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my
study I should say it existed- meaning thereby that if I was in my
study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does
perceive it. There was an odour, that is, it was smelt; there was a
sound, that is, it was heard; a colour or figure, and it was perceived
by sight or touch. This is all that I can understand by these and
the like expressions. For as to what is said of the absolute existence
of unthinking things without any relation to their being perceived,
that seems perfectly unintelligible. Their esse is percepi, nor is
it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or
thinking things which perceive them.

4. It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that
houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an
existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the
understanding. But, with how great an assurance and acquiescence
soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever
shall find in his heart to call it in question may, if I mistake
not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For, what are
the fore-mentioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? and
what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it not
plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them,
should exist unperceived?

5. If we thoroughly examine this tenet it will, perhaps, be found at