What is Being?

89. To have a firm System of sound and real Knowledge, it is most important to define what is meant by Thing, Reality, Existence.

These may be proof against the Assaults of Scepticism.

Thing or Being is the most general Name of all.

• It is classified as either Spirits or Ideas.*

Spirits are active, indivisible Substances.

Ideas are inert, fleeting, dependent Beings, which subsist not by themselves, but are supported by, or exist in Minds or spiritual Substances.

We comprehend our own Existence by inward Feeling or Reflexion, and that of other Spirits by Reason.

We may be said to have some Knowledge or Notion of our own Minds, of Spirits and active Beings, whereof in a strict Sense we have not Ideas.

Similarly, we know and have a Notion of relations between Things or Ideas, which relations are distinct from the Ideas or Things related, inasmuch as the latter may be perceived by us without our perceiving the former.

To me it seems that Ideas, Spirits and Relations are all in their respective kinds, the Object of humane Knowledge and Subject of Discourse: and that the Term Idea would be improperly extended to signify every thing we know or have any Notion of.

90. Ideas imprinted on the Senses are real Things, do really exist.

These cannot subsist without the Minds which perceive them, or that they are Resemblances of any Archetypes existing without the Mind.

This is because the very Being of a Sensation or Idea consists in being perceived, and an Idea can be like nothing but an Idea.

The Things perceived by Sense may be termed external, with regard to their Origin.

• These are not generated from within, by the Mind itself.
• Instead, these are imprinted by a Spirit distinct from that which perceives them.

Sensible Objects may likewise be said to be without the Mind, in another sense, namely when they exist in some other Mind.

Thus when I shut my Eyes, the Things I saw may still exist, but it must be in another Mind.

91. These definitions do not derogate from the Reality of Things.

Extension, Motion, and all sensible Qualities need Support as they are not able to subsist by themselves.

But the Objects perceived by Sense, are allowed to be nothing but Combinations of those Qualities, and consequently cannot subsist by themselves.

In this way, in denying the Things perceived by Sense, an Existence independent of a Substance, or Support wherein they may exist, I detract nothing from the received Opinion of their Reality.

The only difference is, that according to us the unthinking Beings perceived by Sense, have no Existence distinct from Being perceived, and cannot therefore exist in any other Substance, than those unextended, indivisible Substances, or Spirits, which act, and think, and perceive them:

Whereas Philosophers vulgarly hold that the sensible Qualities exist in an inert, extended, unperceiving Substance, which they call Matter which they assert actually subsists without thinking Beings, even the eternal Mind of the Creator.

They suppose that Matter is only made up of Ideas of the corporeal Substances created by him.

92. The Doctrine of Matter or corporeal Substance is the main Pillar and Support of Scepticism, as well as Atheism and Irreligion.

They conceive of Matter produced out of nothing.

This made even those who believe in God reason that Matter was uncreated and coeternal with him.

Material Substance has been a great friend to Atheists in all Ages.

All their monstrous Systems are so dependent on it, that when this Cornerstone is removed, the whole Fabrick falls to the Ground.

93. Impious and profane Persons readily fall in with those Systems which favour their Inclinations.

They do this by:

• deriding immaterial Substance
• supposing the Soul to be divisible and subject to Corruption as the Body.

This excludes all Freedom, Intelligence, and Design from the Formation of Things.

Instead, they make a self-existent, stupid, unthinking Substance the Root and Origin of all Beings.

They deny a Providence, or Inspection of a superior Mind over the Affairs of the World.

They attribute the whole Series of Events either to:

• blind Chance or
• fatal Necessity

These arise from the Impulse of one Body on another.

All this is very natural.