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CHAP. III.

PART I. jects, we naturally and justly conceive those ob jects to be the cause of them; and when imOf Touch. pressions are made upon two or more different organs, by the same object, at the same time, the evidence of their being so is as strong and certain as any, that does not admit of demonstration, by comparative numbers and quantities, can be. I may have a pain in my hand, produced by some internal cause, so exactly resembling that produced by the puncture of a needle, or the burning of a caustic, that, if I had no other sense, but that of feeling, I might not be able to distinguish the one from the other: but if I see the needle thrust into it, or the caustic applied to it, and feel the pain to commence at the same instant, I naturally connect them as cause and effect; and, having once imprinted them as such in my memory, continue to connect them ever afterwards. Neither the needle, however, nor the puncture; the caustic, nor the burning, have any resemblance, either with the sensations felt or with the remembrances of them imprinted: but the evidence of two senses to one point becomes that of a parallax; and the force of it is doubled with every repetition of the same sensation from the same external cause.

9. These remembrances, or retained perceptions or notions, Des Cartes and Locke called

CHAP. 11.

ideas; a name borrowed from the Platonic philoso- PART I. phy, with which their followers Berkeley and Hume contrived to subvert first the material, and of Touch. then the intellectual world. Plato, indeed, had before attempted to subvert the former; or, at least, to render its foundations very insecure : for he too perceived that there was no resemblance between ideas and the material objects that they appear to represent in the mind; but concluding that these notions must be exact copies from some real existences, he derived them from the intellectual world; whence the human soul sprang, and where the eternal ideas, according to which the fleeting and changeable forms, which we see impressed upon gross matter, remained immutable in the divine mind. All real knowledge, therefore, according to this philosopher, was innate; and the improvement of it consisted in recovering and restoring the images, with which the soul had originally been endowed, but which were buried and obscured in the opaque dross of matter. These images or ideas were not derived from any particular forms of substances, either here or elsewhere; but all particular forms of substances, together with our ideas of them, were derived from the general ideas of the intellectual world; so that a triangle was not a triangle, a square not a square,

PART I. nor a circle a circle, because it had a particular material form, or relative dimensions; but beOf Touch. cause it partook, in a certain degree, of the qua

CHAP. III.

lities of the immutable idea of triangularity, squareness, or rotundity eternally existing in the divine mind *.

10. When men once renounce the evidence of their senses, either in believing or doubting, there is nothing which they may not believe or doubt with perfect consistency. If we can once persuade ourselves that, because ideas have no resemblance to their material objects, they may have arisen in the mind without them, we may certainly believe or disbelieve the existence of those material objects, as we please: for our feelings and perceptions are certainly internal; nor can we at all tell how they are connected with any thing external; the mode of conveyance, between the organs of sense and those of perception, being beyond the reach of human discovery. That there is some mode of con veyance the constant recurrence of particular associations proves to the satisfaction of ordinary men: but if learned philosophers choose to doubt it, because it is not demonstrable, they must doubt on. Scepticism has never attempted to

See Phædon, et de Republicâ, lib. x.

B

make proselytes by fire or sword, and is there- PART I. fore at least an innocent absurdity compared

with its antagonist bigotry.

11. All its wandering clouds of confusion and perplexity seem to have arisen from employing the Greek word idea, sometimes in its proper sense to signify a mental image or vision, and sometimes in others the most adverse and remote, to signify perception, remembrance, notion, knowledge, and almost every other operation, or result of operation, of which mind is capable. Of motion, for instance, in a particular object, we have a perception when we see or feel it move, and a remembrance afterwards: but of the motion of the earth, either on its axis or in its orbit, we have neither perception nor remembrance, but only a notion, acquired by comparative deductions from other perceptions: while of motion in general we have no particular perception, remembrance, or notion; but only general knowledge collected and abstracted from all. Of neither, however, have we any idea, if by idea be meant mental image or resemblance: but, nevertheless, to infer from thence that we have no adequate perception, remembrance, notion, or knowledge either of motion or body, seems as adverse to sound philosophy as to common sense; there being no more reason why a notion should resemble a per

CHAP. III.

Of Touch,

CHAP. III.

PART I, ception; a perception, a sensation, or a sensation its object, than that an exertion should resemble an Of Touch. arm; an arm, a lever; or a lever, a weight; nor is it less absurd to make the want of resemblance between the cause, the means, and the end, a ground for doubting the reality of either, in the one case, than in the other. I could therefore wish to drop or modify the use of the word idea; but it has become too general and established for an individual to attempt it; and I have only to intreat the reader to keep these distinctions in his mind, and apply them occasionally.

12. Among the pleasures of sense, more particularly among those belonging to touch, there is a certain class, which, though arising from negative causes, are nevertheless real and positive pleasures: as when we gradually sink from any violent or excessive degree of action or irritation into a state of tranquillity and repose: I say gradually; for if the transition be sudden and abrupt, it will not be pleasant; the pleasure arising from the inverted action of the nerves, and not from the utter cessation of action.

13. From this inverted action arises the gratification which we receive from a cool breeze, when the body has been excessively

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