sted in the case.

PHIL. Good Hylas, do but reflect a little on the point, and then tell
me whether there be any more in it than this: from the ideas you actually
perceive by sight, you have by experience learned to collect what other
ideas you will (according to the standing order of nature) be affected
with, after such a certain succession of time and motion.

HYL. Upon the whole, I take it to be nothing else.

PHIL. Now, is it not plain that if we suppose a man born blind was on a
sudden made to see, he could at first have no experience of what may be
SUGGESTED by sight?

HYL. It is.

PHIL. He would not then, according to you, have any notion of distance
annexed to the things he saw; but would take them for a new set of
sensations, existing only in his mind?

HYL. It is undeniable.

PHIL. But, to make it still more plain: is not DISTANCE a line turned
endwise to the eye?

HYL. It is.

PHIL. And can a line so situated be perceived by sight?

HYL. It cannot.

PHIL. Doth it not therefore follow that distance is not properly and
immediately perceived by sight?

HYL. It should seem so.

PHIL. Again, is it your opinion that colours are at a distance?

HYL. It must be acknowledged they are only in the mind.

PHIL. But do not colours appear to the eye as coexisting in the same
place with extension and figures?

HYL. They do.

PHIL. How can you then conclude from sight that figures exist without,
when you acknowledge colours do not; the sensible appearance being the
very same with regard to both?

HYL. I know not what to answer.

PHIL. But, allowing that distance was truly and immediately perceived
by the mind, yet it would not thence follow it existed out of the mind.
For, whatever is immediately perceived is an idea: and can any idea exist
out of the mind?

HYL. To suppose that were absurd: but, inform me, Philonous, can we
perceive or know nothing beside our ideas?

PHIL. As for the rational deducing of causes from effects, that
is beside our inquiry. And, by the senses you can best tell whether you
perceive anything which is not immediately perceived. And I ask you,
whether the things immediately perceived are other than your own
sensations or ideas? You have indeed more than once, in the course of
this conversation, declared yourself on those points; but you seem, by
this last question, to have departed from what you then thought.

HYL. To speak the truth, Philonous, I