| When I view this table and that chimney, nothing is present to me but particular perceptions, which are of a like nature with all the other perceptions. |
| This is the doctrine of philosophers. |
| But this table, which is present to me, and the chimney, may and do exist separately. |
| This is the doctrine of the vulgar, and implies no contradiction. |
| There is no contradiction, therefore, in extending the same doctrine to all the perceptions. |
| In general, the following reasoning seems satisfactory. |
| All ideas are borrowed from preceding perceptions. |
| Our ideas of objects, therefore, are derived from that source. |
| Consequently no proposition can be intelligible or consistent with regard to objects, which is not so with regard to perceptions. |
| But it is intelligible and consistent to say, that objects exist distinct and independent, without any common simple substance or subject of inhesion. |
| This proposition, therefore, can never be absurd with regard to perceptions. |
| When I turn my reflection on myself, I never can perceive this self without some one or more perceptions; nor can I ever perceive any thing but the perceptions. |
| It is the composition of these, therefore, which forms the self. |
| We can conceive a thinking being to have either many or few perceptions. |
| Suppose the mind to be reduced even below the life of an oyster. |
| Suppose it to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. |
| Consider it in that situation. |
| Do you conceive any thing but merely that perception? Have you any notion of self or substance? If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give you that notion. |
| The annihilation, which some people suppose to follow upon death, and which entirely destroys this self, is nothing but an extinction of all particular perceptions; love and hatred, pain and pleasure, thought and sensation. |
| These therefore must be the same with self; since the one cannot survive the other. |
| Is self the same with substance? If it be, how can that question have place, concerning the subsistence of self, under a change of substance? If they be distinct, what is the difference betwixt them? For my part, I have a notion of neither, when conceived distinct from particular perceptions. |