To Be Is To Be Perceived

It Would Much Conduce To The Public Benefit, If, Instead Of Discouraging Free-thinking, There Was Erected In The Midst Of This Free Country A Dianoetic Academy, Or Seminary For Free-thinkers, Provided With Retired Chambers, And Galleries, And Shady Walks And Groves, Where, After Seven Years Spent In Silence And Meditation, A Man Might Commence A Genuine Free-thinker, And From That Time Forward, Have License To Think What He Pleased, And A Badge To Distinguish Him From Counterfeits.

Westward The Course Of Empire Takes Its Way; The Four First Acts Already Past, A Fifth Shall Close The Drama With The Day: Time's Noblest Offspring Is The Last.

All That Stock Of Arguments [the Skeptics] Produce To Depreciate Our Faculties, And Make Mankind Appear Ignorant And Low, Are Drawn Principally From This Head, To Wit, That We Are Under An Invincible Blindness As To The True And Real Nature Of Things.

The Real Essence, The Internal Qualities, And Constitution Of Even The Meanest Object, Is Hid From Our View; Something There Is Inevery Drop Of Water, Every Grain Of Sand, Which It Is Beyond The Power Of Human Understanding To Fathom Or Comprehend. But It Is Evidentthat We Are Influenced By False Principles To That Degree As To Mistrust Our Senses, And Think We Know Nothing Of Those Things Which We Perfectly Comprehend.

Colour, Figure, Motion, Extension And The Like, Considered Only So Many Sensations In The Mind, Are Perfectly Known, There Being Nothing In Them Which Is Not Perceived. But If They Are Looked On As Notes Or Images, Referred To Things Or Archetypes Existing Without The Mind, Then Are We Involved All In Scepticism.