isn’t anything hard in a dream, is there?”
“No, not in a dream.”
“A person can also be hypnotized into ‘feeling’ things like warmth and cold, a
caress or a punch.”
“But if the table wasn’t really hard, why did I feel it?”
“Berkeley believed in a ‘spirit.’ He thought all our ideas have a cause beyond
our consciousness, but that this cause is not of a material nature. It is spiritual.”
Sophie had started biting her nails again.
Alberto continued: “According to Berkeley, my own soul can be the cause of
my own ideas—just as when I dream—but only another will or spirit can be the cause
of the ideas that make up the ‘corporeal’ world. Everything is due to that spirit which
is the cause of ‘everything in everything’ and which ‘all things consist in,’ he said.”
“What ‘spirit’ was he talking about?”
“Berkeley was of course thinking of God. He said that ‘we can moreover claim
that the existence of God is far more clearly perceived than the existence of man.”’
“Is it not even certain that we exist?”
“Yes, and no. Everything we see and feel is ‘an effect of God’s power,’ said
Berkeley. For God is ‘intimately present in our consciousness, causing to exist for us
the profusion of ideas and perceptions that we are constantly subject to.’ The whole
world around us and our whole life exist in God. He is the one cause of everything
that exists. We exist only in the mind of God.”
“I am amazed, to put it mildly.”
“So ‘to be or not to be’ is not the whole question. The question is also who we
are. Are we really human beings of flesh and blood? Does our world consist of real
things—or are we encircled by the mind?”
Sophie continued to bite her nails.
Alberto went on: “Material reality was not the only thing Berkeley was
questioning. He was also questioning whether ‘time’ and ‘space’ had any absolute or
independent existence. Our own perception of time and space can also be merely
figments of the mind. A week or two for us need not be a week or two for God ...”
“You said that for Berkeley this spirit that everything exists in is the Christian
God.”
“Yes, I suppose I did. But for us ...”
“Us?”
“For us—for you and me—this ‘will or spirit’ that is the ‘cause of everything in
everything’ could be Hilde’s father.”
Sophie’s eyes opened wide with incredulity. Yet at the same time a realization
began to dawn on her.
“Is that what you think?”
“I cannot see any other possibility. That is perhaps the only feasible explanation
for everything that has happened to us. All those postcards and signs that have turned
up here and there... Hermes beginning to talk ... my own involuntary slips of the
tongue.”
“I...”
“Imagine my calling you Sophie, Hilde! I knew all the time that your name
wasn’t Sophie.”
“What are you saying? Now you are definitely confused.”
“Yes, my mind is going round and round, my child. Like a giddy planet round a
burning sun.”
“And that sun is Hilde’s father?”