Has Berkeley, in his juvenile ardour, and with the impetuosity natural to him, while seeking to demonstrate the impotence of matter, and the omnipresent supremacy of Spirit, so spiritualised the material world as to make it unfit for the symbolical office in the universe of reality which he supposes it to discharge? Is its potential existence in God, and its percipient realisation by me, and presumably by innumerable other sentient beings, an adequate account of the real material world existing in place and time? Can this universal orderly dream experienced in sense involve the objectivity implied in its being the reliable medium of social intercourse? Does _such_ a material world provide me with a means of escape from absolute solitude? Nay, if Matter cannot rise into reality without percipient spirit as realising factor, can my individual percipient spirit realise _myself_ without independent Matter? Without intelligent life Matter is pronounced unreal. But is it not also true that without Matter, and the special material organism we call our body, percipient spirit is unreal? Does not Nature seem as indispensable to Spirit as Spirit is to Nature? Must we not assume at least their unbeginning and unending coexistence, even if we recognise in Spirit the deeper and truer reality? Do the New Principles explain the _final_ ground of trust and certainty about the universe of change into which I entered as a stranger when I was born? If they make all that I have believed in as _outward_ to be in its reality _inward_, do they not disturb the balance that is necessary to _all_ human certainties, and leave me without any realities at all? That Berkeley at the age of twenty-five, and educated chiefly by Locke, had fathomed or even entertained all these questions was hardly to be looked for. How far he had gone may be gathered by a study of the sequel of his book of _Principles_. ii. Objections to the New Principles answered (sect. 34-84). The supposed Objections, with Berkeley’s answers, may be thus interpreted:— _First objection._ (Sect. 34-40.) The preceding Principles banish all substantial realities, and substitute a universe of chimeras. _Answer._ This objection is a play upon the popular meaning of the word “idea.” That name is appropriate to the phenomena presented in sense, because they become concrete realities only in the experience of living Spirit; and so it is not confined to the chimeras of individual fancy, which may misrepresent the real ideas of sense that are presented in the natural system independently of our will. _Second objection._ (Sect. 41.) The preceding Principles abolish the distinction between Perception and Imagination—between imagining one’s self burnt and actually being burnt. _Answer._ Real fire differs from fancied fire: as real pain does from fancied pain; yet no one supposes that real pain any more than imaginary pain can exist unfelt by a sentient intelligence.