three dialogues between hylas and philonous

And in claiming to distinguish the species of real things on the basis of the appearances in your mind, you may be acting as foolishly as someone who inferred that two men were of a different species because their clothes were of different colours.

That yellowness, that weight, and other sensible qualities-do you think that they are really in the gold? They are only relations to the senses, and have no absolute existence in nature. Hyl: Believe me, Philonous, you can only distinguish between your own ideas. How could I do that if I didn’t know what either truly was? Phil: But surely, Hylas, I can distinguish gold, for example, from iron.

So we shouldn’t claim to affirm or know anything about them as they are in their own nature. None of them has in itself anything like the sensible qualities that we perceive. The same may be said of all other real things or corporeal substances that make up the world. But what does that have to do with the real tree or stone? I tell you, the colour, shape, and hardness that you perceive aren’t the real natures of those things, or in the least like them. All you know is that you have such and such an idea or appearance in your own mind. Hyl: Know? No, it is impossible that you or any man alive should know it. Phil: Don’t I know that this is a real stone that I’m standing on, and that what I see before my eyes is a real tree? You are utterly in the dark as to their internal constitution, their true and real nature. Hyl: You may indeed know that fire appears hot, and water fluid but that is merely knowing what sensations are produced in your own mind when fire or water is applied to your sense-organs. Phil: Are you going to tell me that I don’t really know what fire or water is? Hyl: There isn’t one single thing in the world whose real nature we can know. Phil: What? You say we can know nothing, Hylas? Nature certainly never intended us for speculation. Our faculties are too narrow and too few. We make a fuss about knowledge, and spend our lives in the pursuit of it, yet all the time, alas! we know nothing and I don’t think we can ever know anything in this life. What we approve today we condemn tomorrow.

Hylas: Truly my opinion is that all our opinions are equally useless and uncertain. Philonous: Tell me, Hylas, what has come of yesterday’s meditation? Has it confirmed you in the views you held when we parted? Or has it given you cause to change your opinion?

Three dialogues between hylas and philonous