een different potentialities, and there must, moreover, be limits
to, and there may be changes in, those relations. Wherefore, since there
is in matter a potentiality of imparting to the mind those sensations
whence it derives its ideas of place and distance, and since figure is
but a 'limitation of distance,' and motion but a 'change of place,' it
necessarily follows that there is in matter a potentiality of conveying
to the mind those sensations whence it derives its ideas of figure and
motion. And a similar remark applies equally to solidity, and to every
other so-called quality of matter. All of them are substantive
potentialities of producing in the mind those sensations whence our
ideas of themselves (the qualities) are derived. No doubt all these
qualities would be _inconceivable_ in the absence of a mind by which
they might be _conceived_, but it is not necessary that, in order to
_be_, they should be _conceived_. In discussions of any abstruseness we
cannot be too precise in our use of words, and we shall inevitably be
going astray here if we allow ourselves for a moment to forget that a
quality and the conception of that quality are not one single thing, but
two things. Can it be seriously supposed that if all the conscious
creatures, of every description, by which the universe is peopled, were
to fall temporarily into complete stupor, the material universe would,
at the commencement of the trance, be deprived of its extension,
solidity, figure, and all its other constituent properties, recovering
them again as soon as its inhabitants woke up again? Can it be doubted
that, on the contrary, all potentialities resident in its material
composition would pursue the even tenor of their way just as if nothing
had happened; performing, during the temporary absence of external
percipient minds, precisely those operations which, as soon as
consciousness returned to those minds, would be followed by the
perceptions of sight, hearing, and touch? But if so, then plainly it is
exceedingly derogatory to matter to charge it with such absolute
dependence on external support that its very being consists in being
perceived from without. That matter cannot exist without mind I
cheerfully admit, or rather most earnestly affirm, proposing presently
to explain in what sense I make the affirmation. Meanwhile let it
suffice to have ascertained that the mental service with which matter
cannot dispense, whatever else it be, is at any rat