he second step. He calls the qualities of
objects _sensible_ things; but sensible they are not according to his
definition, for they are not capable of being immediately perceived by
the senses. It is not sense which perceives, but reason which infers
them. The senses, as Berkeley elsewhere repeatedly and earnestly
insists, receive nothing from objects but sensations, and these they
communicate to the mind without accompanying them by the slightest hint
as to whence they originally came. The senses suggest nothing as to any
qualities resident in or appertaining to an object corresponding with
the sensations derived from the object. The existence of such qualities
is an inference of reason which, taking for granted that sensations, in
common with all other occurrences, must have causes, and observing that
certain of them commonly occur in the presence of certain objects, and
never occur in the absence of those objects, infers that the causes of
the sensations must exist in the objects. To the causes thus inferred
the name of qualities is given, to distinguish them from the sensations
whereof they are causes; and the Berkeleian transgression consists in
overlooking the distinction between things so diametrically opposite.

By the commission of such a sin the most powerful intellect becomes
inevitably committed to further enormities. Except by neglecting to
distinguish between sight and hearing, the effects, and light and sound,
their respective causes, it would surely have been impossible for
Professor Huxley to come to the strange conclusion that if all living
beings were blind and deaf, 'darkness and silence would everywhere
reign.' Had he not himself previously explained that light and sound are
peculiar motions communicated to the vibrating particles of an
universally diffused ether, which motions, on reaching the eye or ear,
produce impressions, which, after various modifications, result
eventually in seeing or hearing? How these motions are communicated to
the ether matters not. Only it is indispensable to note that they are
not communicated by the percipient owner of the eye or ear, so that the
fact of there being no percipient present cannot possibly furnish any
reason why the motions should not go on all the same. But as long as
they did go on there would necessarily be light and sound; for the
motions are themselves light and sound. If, on returning to his study in
which, an hour before, he had left a candle burn