VII

Page 21. _To the confusion of common sense._

Berkeley and his followers sometimes maintain that common sense is on
their side, that they have simply analysed the fact of our experience of
the material world, and if there is any paradox in their idealism, it is
merely verbal and disappears with familiarity. All the "reality", they
say, all the force, obduracy, and fertility of nature subsist undiminished
after we discover that this reality resides, and can only reside, in the
fixed order of our experience.

But no: analysis of immediate experience will never disclose any fixed
order in it; the surface of experience, when not interpreted
materialistically, is an inextricable dream. Berkeley and his followers,
when they look in this direction, towards nature and the rationale of
experience and science, are looking away from their own system, and
relying instead on the automatic propensity of human nature to routine, so
that we spontaneously prepare for repeating our actions (not our
experience) and even anticipate their occasions; a propensity further
biased by the dominant rhythms of the psyche, so that we assume a future
not so much similar to the past, as better. When developed, this
propensity turns into trust in natural or divine laws; but it is contrary
to common sense to expect such laws to operate apart from matter and from
the material continuity of external occasions. This appears clearly in our
trust in persons--a radical animal propensity--which is consonant with
common sense when these persons are living bodies, but becomes
superstitious, or at least highly speculative, when these persons are
disembodied spirits.