thing?

HYL. I cannot.

PHIL. Or, can you imagine that filth and ordure affect those brute
animals that feed on them out of choice, with the same smells which we
perceive in them?

HYL. By no means.

PHIL. May we not therefore conclude of smells, as of the other
forementioned qualities, that they cannot exist in any but a perceiving
substance or mind?

HYL. I think so.

PHIL. Then as to SOUNDS, what must we think of them: are they
accidents really inherent in external bodies, or not?

HYL. 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.

PHIL. What reason is there for that, Hylas?

HYL. 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.

PHIL. 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.

HYL. 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.

PHIL. What! is sound then a sensation?

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

PHIL. And can any sensation exist without the mind?

HYL. No, certainly.

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

HYL. 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 the air.

PHIL. I thought I had already obviated that distinction, by 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?

HYL. I am.

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

HYL. It may.

PHIL. It is then go