RATUM?

PHIL. When I see your reasons, you shall hear what I have to say to
them.

HYL. Is the mind extended or unextended?

PHIL. Unextended, without doubt.

HYL. Do you say the things you perceive are in your mind?

PHIL. They are.

HYL. Again, have I not heard you speak of sensible impressions?

PHIL. I believe you may.

HYL. Explain to me now, O Philonous! how it is possible there should be
room for all those trees and houses to exist in your mind. Can extended
things be contained in that which is unextended? Or, are we to imagine
impressions made on a thing void of all solidity? You cannot say objects
are in your mind, as books in your study: or that things are imprinted on
it, as the figure of a seal upon wax. In what sense, therefore, are we to
understand those expressions? Explain me this if you can: and I shall
then be able to answer all those queries you formerly put to me about my
SUBSTRATUM.

PHIL. Look you, Hylas, when I speak of objects as existing in the mind,
or imprinted on the senses, I would not be understood in the gross
literal sense; as when bodies are said to exist in a place, or a seal to
make an impression upon wax. My meaning is only that the mind comprehends
or perceives them; and that it is affected from without, or by some being
distinct from itself. This is my explication of your difficulty; and how
it can serve to make your tenet of an unperceiving material SUBSTRATUM
intelligible, I would fain know.

HYL. Nay, if that be all, I confess I do not see what use can be made
of it. But are you not guilty of some abuse of language in this?

PHIL. None at all. It is no more than common custom, which you know is
the rule of language, hath authorised: nothing being more usual, than for
philosophers to speak of the immediate objects of the understanding as
things existing in the mind. 'Nor is there anything in this but what is
conformable to the general analogy of language; most part of the mental
operations being signified by words borrowed from sensible things; as is
plain in the terms COMPREHEND, reflect, DISCOURSE, &C., which,
being applied to the mind, must not be taken in their gross, original
sense.

HYL. You have, I own, satisfied me in this point. But there still
remains one great difficulty, which I know not how you will get over.
And, indeed, it is of such importance that if you could solve all others,
without being able to find a solution for this, you must nev