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52 that at a given signal Contarini should let him down and release him from the noose. But as soon as he felt the knot about his throat he lost consciousness, so that he could not give the signal they had agreed upon. Contarini waited, astonished at the young philosopher's power of resistance; but he finally got frightened, and let poor Berkeley down. If he had waited a few minutes more, the world would have had to wait a while for the theory of immaterialism.

Berkeley placed great reliance on the examination of one's own experience, if made directly, and without scholastic prejudice. The way in which he constantly appeals to the experience of the reader, or rather, the way in which he constantly orders the reader to perform certain experiments, constitutes, indeed, one of the most original features of his method. When he has set forth one after another, in that clear and agile style of his, the arguments that seem best adapted to support his thesis or to overthrow that of his adversary, he has recourse finally to the introspective command. "Do you yourself, O reader," he says, "think of this matter seriously, and consider whether it is indeed conceivable or possible." Poor Hylas lends himself again and again