thal thoughtless
and inactive, I chose to mark them by the word IDEA, which implies
those properties.

40. THE EVIDENCE OF THE SENSES NOT DISCREDITED.--But, say what we can,
some one perhaps may be apt to reply, he will still believe his
senses, and never suffer any arguments, how plausible soever,
to prevail over the certainty of them. Be it so; assert the evidence
of sense as high as you please, we are willing to do the same.
That what I see, hear, and feel DOTH EXIST, THAT IS to say, IS PERCEIVED
BY ME, I no more doubt than I do of my own being. But I do not see how
the testimony of sense can be alleged as a proof for the existence of
anything which is not perceived by sense. We are not for having any man
turn SCEPTIC and disbelieve his senses; on the contrary, we give them all
the stress and assurance imaginable; nor are there any principles more
opposite to Scepticism than those we have laid down [Note.], as shall be
hereafter clearly shown.

[Note: They extirpate the very root of scepticism, "the fallacy
of the senses."--Ed.]

41. SECOND OBJECTION.--ANSWER.--Secondly, it will be OBJECTED
that there is a great difference betwixt real fire for instance,
and the idea of fire, betwixt dreaming or imagining oneself burnt,
and actually being so: if you suspect it to be only the idea of
fire which you see, do but put your hand into it and you will be
convinced with a witness. This and the like may be urged in opposition
to our tenets. To all which the ANSWER is evident from what has
been already said; and I shall only add in this place, that if real
fire be very different from the idea of fire, so also is the real pain
that it occasions very different from the idea of the same pain, and yet
nobody will pretend that real pain either is, or can possibly be, in an
unperceiving thing, or without the mind, any more than its idea.

42. THIRD OBJECTION.--ANSWER.--Thirdly, it will be objected that
we see things actually without or at distance from us, and which
consequently do not exist in the mind; it being absurd that those
things which are seen at the distance of several miles should be
as near to us as our own thoughts. In answer to this, I desire it
may be considered that in a DREAM we do oft perceive things as
existing at a great distance off, and yet for all that, those things
are acknowledged to have their existence only in the mind.

43. But, for the fuller clearing of this point, it may be worth while to
conside