od sense to speak of MOTION as of a thing that is
LOUD, SWEET, ACUTE, or GRAVE.

HYL. _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?

PHIL. It seems then there are two sorts of sound--the one vulgar, or
that which is heard, the other philosophical and real?

HYL. Even so.

PHIL. And the latter consists in motion?

HYL. I told you so before.

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

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

PHIL. It should follow then, that, according to you, real sounds may
possibly be SEEN OR FELT, but never HEARD.

HYL. 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.

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

HYL. 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.

PHIL. And I hope you will make no difficulty to acknowledge the same of
COLOURS.

HYL. Pardon me: the case of colours is very different. Can anything be
plainer than that we see them on the objects?

PHIL. The objects you speak of are, I suppose, corporeal Substances
existing without the mind?

HYL. They are.

PHIL. And have true and real colours inhering in them?

HYL. Each visible object hath that colour which we see in it.

PHIL. How! is there anything visible but what we pe