t else think you I could mean?

PHIL. Sensible things are all immediately perceivable; and those things
which are immediately perceivable are ideas; and these exist only in the
mind. Thus much you have, if I mistake not, long since agreed to.

HYL. I do not deny it.

PHIL. The brain therefore you speak of, being a sensible thing, exists
only in the mind. Now, I would fain know whether you think it reasonable
to suppose that one idea or thing existing in the mind occasions all
other ideas. And, if you think so, pray how do you account for the origin
of that primary idea or brain itself?

HYL. I do not explain the origin of our ideas by that brain which is
perceivable to sense--this being itself only a combination of sensible
ideas--but by another which I imagine.

PHIL. But are not things imagined as truly IN THE MIND as things
perceived?

HYL. I must confess they are.

PHIL. It comes, therefore, to the same thing; and you have been all
this while accounting for ideas by certain motions or impressions of the
brain; that is, by some alterations in an idea, whether sensible or
imaginable it matters not.

HYL. I begin to suspect my hypothesis.

PHIL. Besides spirits, all that we know or conceive are our own ideas.
When, therefore, you say all ideas are occasioned by impressions in the
brain, do you conceive this brain or no? If you do, then you talk of
ideas imprinted in an idea causing that same idea, which is absurd. If
you do not conceive it, you talk unintelligibly, instead of forming a
reasonable hypothesis.

HYL. I now clearly see it was a mere dream. There is nothing in it.

PHIL. You need not be much concerned at it; for after all, this way of
explaining things, as you called it, could never have satisfied any
reasonable man. What connexion is there between a motion in the nerves,
and the sensations of sound or colour in the mind? Or how is it possible
these should be the effect of that?

HYL. But I could never think it had so little in it as now it seems to
have.

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

HYL. It is too plain to be denied.

PHIL. 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 so