Can Things Exist Without an Observer?

6. Some Truths there are so near and obvious to the Mind, that a Man need only open his Eyes to see them.

All Bodies which compose the World have not any Subsistence without a Mind.

Their Being is to be perceived or known.

As long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my Mind or that of any other created Spirit, they must either have no Existence at all, or else subsist in the Mind of some eternal Spirit.

It is absurd to attribute an Existence to any single part of them independent of a Spirit.

To be convinced of which, the Reader need only reflect and

To prove this, in your own mind, try to separate any sensible thing from its being perceived by your mind.

7. It follows that there is not any other Substance than Spirit, or that which perceives.

The sensible Qualities are Colour, Figure, Motion, Smell, Taste, and such like, are the Ideas perceived by Sense.

It is a Contradiction for an Idea to exist in an unperceiving Thing.

To have an Idea is to perceive.

We must perceive Colour, Figure, and the like Qualities for them to exist. Hence, there can be no unthinking Substance or Substratum of those Ideas.

8. You say that Ideas do not exist without the Mind, yet in an unthinking Substance, without a Mind, there might be Copies or Resemblances of those Things like them.

I answer, an Idea can be like nothing but an Idea.

• A Colour or Figure can be like nothing but another Colour or Figure.

If we look into our Thoughts, we find it impossible to conceive a Likeness except only between our Ideas.

People think that our Ideas are the Pictures or Representations of those supposed Originals or external Things. But are those external things perceivable by themselves?

If they are, then they are Ideas.

But if you say they are not, then does it mean that:

• a Colour is like something which is invisible?
• Hard or Soft is something which is Intangible?

9. Some people make a Distinction betwixt Primary and Secondary Qualities.

They say:

• primary qualities are Extension, Figure, Motion, Rest, Solidity or Impenetrability and Number
• secondary qualities are all other sensible Qualities, as Colours, Sounds, Tastes, and so forth.

Our Ideas of these they acknowledge not to be the Resemblances of any thing existing without the Mind or when unperceived.

But they assert that our Ideas of the primary Qualities are Patterns or Images of Things which exist without the Mind, in an unthinking Substance which they call Matter.

They say that Matter is an inert, senseless Substance, in which Extension, Figure, and Motion, do actually subsist.

But I have said that:

• Extension, Figure and Motion are only Ideas existing in the Mind
• 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.

10. People assert that:

• Figure, Motion, and the rest of the Primary or Original Qualities exist without the Mind, in unthinking Substances.
• Colours, Sounds, Heat, Cold, and suchlike secondary Qualities, do not, which they tell us are Sensations existing in the Mind alone, that depend on and are occasioned by the different Size, Texture and Motion of the minute Particles of Matter.

This they take for an undoubted Truth, which they can demonstrate beyond all Exception.

Now if it be certain, that those original Qualities are inseparably united with the other sensible Qualities, and not, even in Thought, capable of being abstracted from them, it plainly follows that they exist only in the Mind.

But I desire any one to reflect and try, whether he can by any Abstraction of Thought, conceive the Extension and Motion of a Body, without all other sensible Qualities.

For my own part, I see evidently that it is not in my power to frame an Idea of a Body extended and moved, but I must withal give it some Colour or other sensible Quality which is acknowledged to exist only in the Mind.

In short, Extension, Figure, and Motion, abstracted from all other Qualities, are inconceivable. Where therefore the other sensible Qualities are, there must these be also, to wit, in the Mind and no where else.

11. Great and Small, Swift and Slow, are allowed to exist no where without the Mind, being intirely relative, and changing as the Frame or Position of the Organs of Sense varies.

The Extension therefore which exists without the Mind, is neither great nor small, the Motion neither swift nor slow, that is, they are nothing at all.

But, say you, they are Extension in general, and Motion in general: Thus we see how much the Tenet of extended, moveable Substances existing without the Mind, depends on that strange Doctrine of abstract Ideas.

Here I cannot but remark, how nearly the Vague and indeterminate Description of Matter or corporeal Substance, which the Modern Philosophers are run into by their own Principles, resembles that antiquated and so much ridiculed Notion of Materia prima, to be met with in Aristotle and his Followers.

Without Extension Solidity cannot be conceived; since therefore it has been shewn that Extension exists not in an unthinking Substance, the same must also be true of Solidity.

12. That Number is intirely the Creature of the Mind, even though the other Qualities be allowed to exist without, will be evident to whoever considers, that the same thing bears a different Denomination of Number, as the Mind views it with different respects.

Thus, the same Extension is One or Three or Thirty Six, according as the Mind considers it with reference to a Yard, a Foot, or an Inch. Number is so visibly relative, and dependent on Mens Understanding, that it is strange to think how any one should give it an absolute Existence without the Mind.

We say one Book, one Page, one Line; all these are equally Unites, though some contain several of the others. And in each Instance it is plain, the Unite relates to some particular Combination of Ideas arbitrarily put together by the Mind.

13. Unity I know some will have to be a simple or uncompounded Idea, accompanying all other Ideas into the Mind.

That I have any such Idea answering the Word Unity, I do not find; and if I had, methinks I could not miss finding it.

On the contrary it should be the most familiar to my Understanding, since it is said to accompany all other Ideas, and to be perceived by all the ways of Sensation and Reflexion. To say no more, it is an abstract Idea.

14. I shall farther add, that after the same manner, as modern Philosophers prove certain sensible Qualities to have no Existence in Matter, or without the Mind, the same thing may be likewise proved of all other sensible Qualities whatsoever.

Thus, for Instance, it is said that Heat and Cold are Affections only of the Mind, and not at all Patterns of real Beings, existing in the corporeal Substances which excite them, for that the same Body which appears Cold to one Hand, seems Warm to another.

Now why may we not as well argue that Figure and Extension are not Patterns or Resemblances of Qualities existing in Matter, because to the same Eye at different Stations, or Eyes of a different Texture at the same Station, they appear various, and cannot therefore be the Images of any thing settled and determinate without the Mind?

Sweetness is not really in the sapid Thing, because the thing remaining unaltered the Sweetness is changed into Bitter, as in case of a Fever or otherwise vitiated Palate.

Is it not as reasonable to say, that Motion is not without the Mind, since if the Succession of Ideas in the Mind become swifter, the Motion, it is acknowledged, shall appear slower without any Alteration in any external Object?

15. These prove that Colours and Tastes exist only in the Mind, just like Extension, Figure, and Motion.

Though it must be confessed this Method of arguing doth not so much prove that there is no Extension or Colour in an outward Object, as that we do not know by Sense which is the true Extension or Colour of the Object.

But the Arguments foregoing plainly shew it to be impossible that any Colour or Extension at all, or other sensible Quality whatsoever, should exist in an unthinking Subject without the Mind, or in truth, that there should be any such thing as an outward Object.

16. But let us examine a little the received Opinion. It is said Extension is a Mode or Accident of Matter, and that Matter is the Substratum that supports it. Now I desire that you would explain what is meant by Matter’s supporting Extension: Say you, I have no Idea of Matter, and therefore cannot explain it.

I answer, though you have no positive, yet if you have any meaning at all, you must at least have a relative Idea of Matter; though you know not what it is, yet you must be supposed to know what Relation it bears to Accidents, and what is meant by its supporting them.

It is evident Support cannot here be taken in its usual or literal Sense, as when we say that Pillars support a Building: In what Sense therefore must it be taken?

17. If we inquire into what the most accurate Philosophers declare themselves to mean by Material Substance; we shall find them acknowledge, they have no other meaning annexed to those Sounds, but the Idea of Being in general, together with the relative Notion of its supporting Accidents.

The general Idea of Being appeareth to me the most abstract and incomprehensible of all other; and as for its supporting Accidents, this, as we have just now observed, cannot be understood in the common Sense of those Words; it must therefore be taken in some other Sense, but what that is they do not explain.

So that when I consider the two Parts or Branches which make the signification of the Words Material Substance, I am convinced there is no distinct meaning annexed to them.

But why should we trouble our selves any farther, in discussing this Material Substratum or Support of Figure and Motion, and other sensible Qualities?

Does it not suppose they have an Existence without the Mind? And is not this a direct Repugnancy, and altogether inconceivable?