A world of ideas need not be a private illusion
the view of everything as a personal illusion
The qualification matters: Chesterton describes universal illusion, not every philosophy that makes perceived objects dependent on mind. Berkeley supplies a useful counterexample, though he is not named as the target. In the Principles of Human Knowledge (first published 1710; inspected here in David R. Wilkins's transcription of the 1734 edition), §§29–36 distinguish sensory objects from inventions of the imagination. Their order and independence from our wills preserve a difference between reality and fantasy; Berkeley denies material substance, not the existence of the sun, trees, or bodies. His argument is intended to resist scepticism, as §§86–88 make explicit. Berkeley, §§29–36, 86–88.
This does not refute Chesterton's conditional claim about an unreal cosmos. It prevents an unwarranted expansion of that claim: denying mind-independent matter does not by itself leave thought without objects. Chesterton's own admission that the effect is indirect and doubtful leaves room for precisely this distinction.
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