| And in casting my eye towards the window, I perceive a great extent of fields and buildings beyond my chamber. |
| From all this it may be infered, that no other faculty is required, beside the senses, to convince us of the external existence of body. |
| But to prevent this inference, we need only weigh the three following considerations. |
| First, That, properly speaking, it is not our body we perceive, when we regard our limbs and members, but certain impressions, which enter by the senses; so that the ascribing a real and corporeal existence to these impressions, or to their objects, is an act of the mind as difficult to explain, as that which we examine at present. |
| Secondly, Sounds, and tastes, and smelts, though commonly regarded by the mind as continued independent qualities, appear not to have any existence in extension, and consequently cannot appear to the senses as situated externally to the body. |
| The reason, why we ascribe a, place to them, shall be: considered afterwards. |
| Thirdly, Even our sight informs us not of distance or outness (so to speak) immediately and without a certain reasoning and experience, as is acknowledged by the most rational philosophers. |
| As to the independency of our perceptions on ourselves, this can never be an object of the senses; but any opinion we form concerning it, must be derived from experience and observation: And we shall see afterwards, that our conclusions from experience are far from being favourable to the doctrine of the independency of our perceptions. |
| Mean while we may observe that when we talk of real distinct existences, we have commonly more in our eye their independency than external situation in place, and think an object has a sufficient reality, when its Being is uninterrupted, and independent of the incessant revolutions, which we are conscious of in ourselves. |
| Thus to resume what I have said concerning the senses; they give us no notion of continued existence, because they cannot operate beyond the extent, in which they really operate. |
| They as little produce the opinion of a distinct existence, because they neither can offer it to the mind as represented, nor as original. |
| To offer it as represented, they must present both an object and an image. |
| To make it appear as original, they must convey a falshood; and this falshood must lie in the relations and situation: In order to which they must be able to compare the object with ourselves; and even in that case they do not, nor is it possible they should, deceive us. |
| We may, therefore, conclude with certainty, that the opinion of a continued and of a distinct existence never arises from the senses. |
| To confirm this we may observe, that there are three different kinds of impressions conveyed by the senses. |
| The first are those of the figure, bulk, motion and solidity of bodies. |
| The second those of colours, tastes, smells, sounds, heat and cold. |
| The third are the pains and pleasures, that arise from the application of objects to our bodies, as by the cutting of our flesh with steel, and such like. |
| Both philosophers and the vulgar suppose the first of these to have a distinct continued existence. |
| The vulgar only regard the second as on the same footing. |
| Both philosophers and the vulgar, again, esteem the third to be merely perceptions and consequently interrupted and dependent beings. |