George Berkeley- The principles of human knowledge 1

For the existence of an idea
consists in being perceived.

~
Their esse is percepi, nor is it possible they
should have any existence out of the minds or
thinking things which perceive them.

~
as it is impossible for me to see or
feel anything without an actual sensation of that
thing, so is it impossible for me to conceive in
my thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct
from the sensation or perception of it.

~
all those bodies which
compose the mighty frame of the world, have
not any subsistence without a mind, that their
being is to be perceived or known;

~
from what has been said it follows there is
not any other Substance than Spirit, or that which
perceives.

~
it is
clear there can be no unthinking substance or
substratum.

~
But it is evident from what -we have already shown, that
extension, figure, and motion are only ideas existing
in the mind, and that an idea can be like
nothing but another idea, and that consequently
neither they nor their archetypes can exist in
an unperceiving substance. Hence, it is plain that
that the very notion of what is called Matter or
corporeal substance, involves a contradiction in it.

~
The general idea of Being appeareth to
me the most abstract and incomprehensible of
all other;

~
Hence, it is evident the supposition of
external bodies is not necessary for the producing
our ideas; since it is granted they are produced
sometimes, and might possibly be produced
always in the same order, we see them
in at present, without their concurrence.

~
If therefore it were possible for bodies to exist
without the mind, yet to hold they do so, must
needs be a very precarious opinion; since it is to
suppose, without any reason at all, that God has
created innumerable beings that are entirely useless,
and serve to no manner of purpose.

~
I
think arguments a posteriori are unnecessary for
confirming what has been, if I mistake not, sufficiently
demonstrated a priori.

~
But the mind taking no notice of itself, is deluded to think it can
and does conceive bodies existing unthought of or without the mind,
though at the same time they are apprehended by or exist
in itself.

~
Alittle attention will discover to us that the very being of an idea
implies passiveness and inertness in it, insomuch that it
is impossible for an idea to do anything, or, strictly
speaking, to be the cause of anything.

~
the cause of ideas is an incorporeal active substance or Spirit.

~
A spirit is one simple, undivided, active being
as it perceives ideas it is called the understanding,
and as it produces or otherwise operates
about them it is called the will.

~
Such is the nature of spirit, or that which acts,
that it cannot be of itself perceived, but only by
the effects which it produceth.

~
the ideas imprinted
on them are not creatures of my will. There is
therefore some other Will or Spirit that produces
them.

~
The ideas imprinted on the Senses by the
Author of nature are called real things; and those
excited in the imagination being less regular,
vivid, and constant, are more properly termed
ideas, or images of'things, which they copy and represent.

~
certainly no idea, whether faint or strong, can exist
otherwise than in a mind perceiving it.

~
That the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist,
really exist, I make not the least question. The only thing
whose existence we deny is that which philosophers
call Matter or corporeal substance.