judge the sensation occasioned by the fire, or anything like it, to be in the fire.

Hylas. Well, since it must be so, I am content to yield this point, and acknowledge that heat and cold are only sensations existing in our minds. But there still remain qualities enough to secure the reality of external things.

Philonous. But what will you say, Hylas, if it shall appear that the case is the same with regard to all other sensible qualities, and that they can no more be supposed to exist without the mind than heat and cold?

Hylas. Then indeed you will have done something to the purpose; but that is what I despair of seeing proved. . . . Philonous. Then as to sounds, what must we think of them? Are they accidents really inherent in external bodies, or not?

Hylas. That they inhere not in the sonorous bodies is plain from hence: because a bell struck in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump sends forth no sound. The air, therefore, must be thought the subject of sound.

Philonous. What reason is there for that, Hylas?

Hylas. Because, when any motion is raised in the air, we perceive a sound greater or lesser, according to the air's motion; but without some motion in the air we never hear any sound at all.

Philonous. And granting that we never hear a sound but when some motion is produced in the air, yet I do not see how you can infer from thence that the sound itself is in the air.

Hylas. It is this very motion in the external air that produces in the mind the sensation of sound. For, striking on the drum of the ear, it causeth a vibration, which by the auditory nerves being communicated to the brain, the soul is thereupon affected with the sensation called sound.

Philonous. What! is sound, then, a sensation?

Hylas. I tell you, as perceived by us, it is a particular sensation in the mind.

Philonous. And can any sensation exist without the mind? Hylas. No, certainly.

Philonous. How then can sound, being a sensation, exist in the air, if by the air you mean a senseless substance existing without the mind?

Hylas. You must distinguish, Philonous, between sound as it

is perceived by us, and as it is in itself, or which is the same thing between the sound we immediately perceive, and that which exists without us. The former, indeed, is a particular kind of sensation, but the latter is merely a vibrative or undulatory motion in the air.

Philonous. I thought I had already obviated that distinction, by the answer I gave when you were applying it in a like case before. But, to say no more of that, are you sure, then, that sound is really nothing but motion?

Hylas. I am.

Philonous. Whatever, therefore, agrees to real sound, may with truth be attributed to motion?

Hylas. It may.

Philonous. It is then good sense to speak of motion as of a thing that is loud, sweet, acute, or grave.

Hylas. I see you are resolved not to understand me. Is it not evident those accidents or modes belong only to sensible sound, or sound in the common acceptation of the word, but not to sound in the real and philosophic sense? — which, as I just now told you, is nothing but a certain motion of the air. Philonous. It seems, then, there are two sorts of sound, the one vulgar, or that which is heard, the other philosophical and real?

Hylas. Even so.

Philonous. And the latter consists in motion?

Hylas. I told you so before.

Philonous. Tell me, Hylas, to which of the senses, think you, the idea of motion belongs? to the hearing?

Hylas. No, certainly; but to the sight and touch.

Philonous. It should follow, then, that, according to you, real sounds may possibly be seen or felt, but never heard.

Hylas. Look you, Philonous, you may, if you please, make a jest of my opinion, but that will not alter the truth of things. I own, indeed, the inferences you draw me into sound something oddly; but common language, you know, is framed by, and for the use of, the vulgar; we must not therefore wonder, if expressions adapted to exact philosophic notions seem uncouth and out of the way.

Philonous. Is it come to that? I assure you, I imagine myself to have gained no small point, since you make so light of part

ing from common phrases and opinions; it being a main part of our inquiry to examine whose notions are widest of the common road, and most repugnant to the general sense of the world. But can you think it no more than a philosophical paradox, to say that real sounds are never heard, and that the idea of them is obtained by some other sense? And is there nothing in this contrary to nature and the truth of things?

Hylas. To deal ingenuously, I do not like it. And, after the concessions already made, I had as well grant that sounds too have no real being without the mind.

Philonous. Well, then, are you at length satisfied that no sensible things have a real existence, and that you are in truth an arrant skeptic?

Hylas. It is too plain to be denied.

Philonous. Look! are not the fields covered with a delightful verdure? Is there not something in the woods and groves, in the rivers and clear springs, that soothes, that delights, that transports the soul? At the prospect of the wide and deep ocean, or some huge mountain whose top is lost in the clouds, or of an old gloomy forest, are not our minds filled with a pleasing horror? Even in rocks and deserts is there not an agreeable wildness? How sincere a pleasure is it to behold the natural beauties of the earth! To preserve and renew our relish for them, is not the veil of night alternately drawn over her face, and doth she not change her dress with the seasons? How aptly are the elements disposed! What variety and use in the meanest productions of nature! What delicacy, what beauty, what contrivance, in animal and vegetable bodies! How exquisitely are all things suited, as well to their particular ends, as to constitute opposite parts of the whole! And, while they mutually aid and support, do they not also set off and illustrate each other? Raise now your thoughts from this ball of earth to all those glorious luminaries that adorn the high arch of heaven. The motion and situation of the planets, are they not admirable for use and order? Were those miscalled erratic - globes once known to stray, in their repeated journeys through the pathless void? Do they not measure areas round the sun ever proportioned to the times? So fixed, so immutable are the laws by which the unseen Author of nature actuates the universe.

How vivid and radiant is the lustre of the fixed stars! How magnificent and rich that negligent profusion with which they appear to be scattered throughout the whole azure vault! yet, if you take the telescope, it brings into your sight a new host of stars that escape the naked eye. Here they seem contiguous and minute, but to a nearer view immense orbs of light, at various distances, far sunk in the abyss of space. Now you must call imagination to your aid. The feeble narrow sense cannot descry innumerable worlds revolving round the central fires, and in those worlds the energy of an all-perfect Mind displayed in endless forms. But neither sense nor imagination are big enough to comprehend the boundless extent, with all its glittering furniture. Though the laboring mind exert and strain each power to its utmost reach, there still stands out ungrasped a surplusage immeasurable. Yet all the vast bodies that compose this mighty frame, how distant and remote soever, are by some secret mechanism, some divine art and force, linked in a mutual dependence and intercourse with each other, even with this earth, which was almost slipped from my thoughts and lost in the crowd of worlds. Is not the whole system immense, beautiful, glorious beyond expression and beyond thought! What treatment, then, do those philosophers deserve, who would deprive these noble and delightful scenes of all reality? How should those principles be entertained that lead us to think all the visible beauty of the creation a false imaginary glare? To be plain, can you expect this skepticism of yours will not be thought extravagantly absurd by all men of sense?

Hylas. Other men may think as they please, but for your part you have nothing to reproach me with. My comfort is, you are as much a skeptic as I am.

Philonous. There, Hylas, I must beg leave to differ from you. Hylas. What! Have you all along agreed to the premises, and do you now deny the conclusion, and leave me to maintain those paradoxes by myself which you led me into? This surely is not fair.

Philonous. I deny that I agreed with you in those notions that led to skepticism. You indeed said the reality of sensible things consisted in an absolute existence out of the minds of spirits, or distinct from their being perceived. And, pursuant to this notion of reality, you are obliged to deny sensible things

any real existence; that is, according to your own definition, you profess yourself a skeptic. But I neither said nor thought the reality of sensible things was to be defined after that manner. To me it is evident, for the reasons you allow of, that sensible things cannot exist otherwise than in a mind or spirit. Whence I conclude, not that they have no real existence, but that, seeing they depend not on my thought, and have an existence distinct from being perceived by me, there must be some other mind wherein they exist. As sure, therefore, as the sensible world really exists, so sure is there an infinite, omnipresent Spirit, who contains and supports it.

Hylas. What! This is no more than I and all Christians hold; nay, and all others too who believe there is a God, and that He knows and comprehends all things.

Philonous. Aye, but here lies the difference. Men commonly believe that all things are known or perceived by God, because they believe the being of a God; whereas I, on the other side, immediately and necessarily conclude the being of a God, because all sensible things must be perceived by Him.

Hylas. . . . It is plain I do not now think with the philosophers, nor yet altogether with the vulgar. I would know how the case stands in that respect; precisely what you have added to or altered in my former notions.

Philonous. I do not pretend to be a setter-up of new notions. My endeavors tend only to unite and place in a clearer light that truth which was before shared between the vulgar and the philosophers, the former being of opinion that those things they immediately perceive are the real things, and the latter, that the things immediately perceived are ideas which exist only in the mind. Which two notions, put together, do in effect constitute the substance of what I advance.

Hylas. I have been a long time distrusting my senses; methought I saw things by a dim light and through false glasses. Now the glasses are removed, and a new light breaks in upon my understanding. I am clearly convinced that I see things in their native forms, and am no longer in pain about their unknown natures or absolute existence. This is the state I find myself in at present; though, indeed, the course that brought me to it I do not yet thoroughly comprehend. You set out