EXTERNAL EXISTENCE.

There never was so egregious a piece of pedantic nonsense, as the dispute against the reality of the external world. We cannot, it is said, prove the fact; but to prove a proposition means, to render it evident to the senses—nothing more. The last appeal in all disputes is to sensation. Even the abstract truths of numbers depend on simple facts, cognizable by the eye and the touch. It is, therefore, a gross misapplication of language to attempt the further proof of what is already felt. No sophism, however difficult of detection, can supersede the sensible conviction of external reality; and Berkeley himself did not run his head against a post.

The theory of this divine, adopted for the purposes of religious theory, leads at once to atheism. We believe in God, as the necessary creator of the world; but the idealist has no ground for believing any other existence than his own mind. Such metaphysics are the boast of the class, who while they refuse education to the people, have the hardihood to deny the capability of the poor man to understand his own affairs. When did the most barbarous ignorance ever fall into such mistakes, as this product of misapplied learning?