My E-mail
dave.raum@gmail.com

My Address
Kingman, AZ

[Few men think; yet all have opinions. Hence men's
opinions are superficial and confused. It is nothing strange that
tenets which in themselves are ever so different, should
nevertheless be confounded with each other, by those who do not
consider them attentively. I shall not therefore be surprised if
some men imagine that I run into the enthusiasm of Malebranche;
though in truth I am very remote from it. He builds on the most
abstract general ideas, which I entirely disclaim. He asserts an
absolute external world, which I deny. He maintains that we are
deceived by our senses, and, know not the real natures or the
true forms and figures of extended beings; of all which I hold
the direct contrary. So that upon the whole there are no
Principles more fundamentally opposite than his and mine. It must
be owned that][5] I entirely agree with what the holy Scripture
saith, "That in God we live and move and have our being." But
that we see things in His essence, after the manner above set
forth, I am far from believing. Take here in brief my meaning: --
It is evident that the things I perceive are my own ideas, and
that no idea can exist unless it be in a mind: nor is it less
plain that these ideas or things by me perceived, either
themselves or their archetypes, exist independently of my mind,
since I know myself not to be their author, it being out of my
power to determine at pleasure what particular ideas I shall be
affected with upon opening my eyes or ears: they must therefore
exist in some other Mind, whose {215} Will it is they should be
exhibited to me. The things, I say, immediately perceived are
ideas or sensations, call them which you will. But how can any
idea or sensation exist in, or be produced by, anything but a
mind or spirit? This indeed is inconceivable. And to assert that
which is inconceivable is to talk nonsense: is it not?

(Excerpt from "Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous"