those which are not perceived, or exist without the mind?

87. Colour, figure, motion, extension, and the like, considered only as
so many sensations in the mind, are perfectly known, there being nothing
in them which is not perceived. But, if they are looked on as notes or
images, referred to things or archetypes existing without the mind, then
are we involved all in scepticism. We see only the appearances, and not
the real qualities of things. What may be the extension, figure, or
motion of anything really and absolutely, or in itself, it is impossible
for us to know, but only the proportion or relation they bear to our
senses. Things remaining the same, our ideas vary, and which of them, or
even whether any of them at all, represent the true quality really
existing in the thing, it is out of our reach to determine. So that, for
aught we know, all we see, hear, and feel may be only phantom and vain
chimera, and not at all agree with the real things existing in rerum
natura. All this scepticism follows from our supposing a difference
between things and ideas, and that the former have a subsistence without
the mind or unperceived. It were easy to dilate on this subject, and show
how the arguments urged by sceptics in all ages depend on the supposition
of external objects.

88. IF THERE BE EXTERNAL MATTER, NEITHER THE NATURE NOR EXISTENCE
OF THINGS CAN BE KNOWN.--So long as we attribute a real existence to
unthinking things, distinct from their being perceived, it is not
only impossible for us to know with evidence the nature of any real
unthinking being, but even that it exists. Hence it is that we see
philosophers distrust their senses, and doubt of the existence of
heaven and earth, of everything they see or feel, even of their own
bodies. And, after all their labour and struggle of thought, they
are forced to own we cannot attain to any self-evident or demonstrative
knowledge of the existence of sensible things. But, all this doubtfulness,
which so bewilders and confounds the mind and makes philosophy
ridiculous in the eyes of the world, vanishes if we annex a meaning
to our words, and not amuse ourselves with the terms "absolute,"
"external," "exist," and such-like, signifying we know not what. I can as
well doubt of my own being as of the being of those things which I
actually perceive by sense; it being a manifest contradiction that any
sensible object should be immediately perceived by sight or touch, and at
th