Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and AtheistsBerkeley, George
Philosophy
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists
Berkeley, George
Idealism; Soul
PHIL. I think you granted before that no unperceiving being was capable
of pleasure, any more than of pain.
HYL. I did.
PHIL. And is not warmth, or a more gentle degree of heat than what
causes uneasiness, a pleasure?
HYL. What then?
PHIL. Consequently, it cannot exist without the mind in an unperceiving
substance, or body.
HYL. So it seems.
PHIL. Since, therefore, as well those degrees of heat that are not
painful, as those that are, can exist only in a thinking substance; may
we not conclude that external bodies are absolutely incapable of any
degree of heat whatsoever?
HYL. On second thoughts, I do not think it so evident that warmth is a
pleasure as that a great degree of heat is a pain.
PHIL. _I_ do not pretend that warmth is as great a pleasure as heat is
a pain. But, if you grant it to be even a small pleasure, it serves to
make good my conclusion.
HYL. I could rather call it an INDOLENCE. It seems to be nothing more
than a privation of both pain and pleasure. And that such a quality or
state as this may agree to an unthinking substance, I hope you will not
deny.
PHIL. If you are resolved to maintain that warmth, or a gentle degree
of heat, is no pleasure, I know not how to convince you otherwise than by
appealing to your own sense. But what think you of cold?
HYL. The same that I do of heat. An intense degree of cold is a pain;
for to feel a very great cold, is to perceive a great uneasiness: it
cannot therefore exist without the mind; but a lesser degree of cold may,
as well as a lesser degree of heat.
PHIL. Those bodies, therefore, upon whose application to our own, we
perceive a moderate degree of heat, must be concluded to have a moderate
degree of heat or warmth in them; and those, upon whose application we
feel a like degree of cold, must be thought to have cold in them.
HYL. They must.
PHIL. Can any doctrine be true that necessarily leads a man into an
absurdity?
HYL. Without doubt it cannot.
PHIL. Is it not an absurdity to think that the same thing should be at
the same time both cold and warm?
HYL. It is.
PHIL. Suppose now one of your hands hot, and the other cold, and that
they are both at once put into the same vessel of water, in an
intermediate state; will not the water seem cold to one hand, and warm to
the other?
HYL. It will.
PHIL. Ought we not therefore, by your principles, to conclude it is
really both cold and warm at the same time, that is, according to your
own concession, to believe an absurdity?
HYL. I confess it seems so.
PHIL. Consequently, the principles themselves are false, since you have
granted that no true principle leads to an absurdity.
HYL. But, after all, can anything be more absurd than to say, THERE IS
NO HEAT IN THE FIRE?
PHIL. To make the point still clearer; tell me whether, in two cases
exactly alike, we ought not to make the same judgment?
HYL. We ought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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