
ATTENDING THE EXERCISE OF THE SENSES. 529 
ceived or felt dissimilarity of the Notions or Conceptions, as to external existences, 
whick are formed in the mind, from the Sensations which suggest or introduce 
them into the mind, is what both Rem and Srewarr relied on, as the answer to 
the sceptical argument of Hume and BerKeey; and is not once noticed either by 
Dr Brown or Lord JEFFREY. 
This argument is given at more length by Rem as follows:—“ It is true we 
have feelings of touch, which every moment present the notion of Extension or 
Space to the mind: but how they come to do so is the question; for those feel- 
ings do no more resemble extension, than they resemble justice or courage ; nor can 
the existence of extended things be inferred from those feelings, by any rules of 
reasoning ; so that the feelings we have by touch can neither explain how we get 
the notion, nor how we come by the belief, of extended things. 
“What hath imposed upon philosophers in this matter is, that the feelings of 
touch, which suggest primary qualities, have no names, nor are they ever reflected 
upon. They pass through the mind instantaneously, and serve only to introduce 
the notion and belief of external things which, by our constitution are connected 
with them. They are natural signs, and the mind immediately passes to the 
thing signified, without making the least reflection upon the sign, or observing 
that there was any such thing.” 
“Let a man press his hand against the table, he feels it hard. But what is the 
meaning of this? The meaning undoubtedly is, that he hath a certain feeling of 
touch, from which he concludes, without any reasoning, or comparing ideas, that 
there is something external really existing, whose parts stick so firmly together, 
that they cannot be displaced without considerable force. 
*« There is here a feeling, and a conclusion drawn from it, or some way suggested 
by it. The hardness of the table is the conclusion, the feeling is the medium by 
which we are led to that conclusion. Let a man attend distinctly to this medium 
and to this conclusion, and he will perceive them to be as unlike as any two things 
in nature. The one is a sensation of the mind, which can have no existence but 
in a sentient being, nor can it exist one moment longer than it is felt ; the other 
is in the table, and we conclude, without any difficulty, that it was in the table 
before it was felt, and continues there after the feeling is over. The one implies no 
kind of extension, nor parts, nor cohesion; the other implies all these. Both, indeed, 
admit of degrees, and the feeling, beyond a certain degree, is a species of pain, but 
adamantine hardness does not imply the least pain.”—( Collected Works, p. 125.) 
The substance of this argument is, that the external existences, or qualities of 
external objects, of which our knowledge is acquired by the senses, are not felt or 
apprehended by us as prototypes or patterns of the sensations, through which 
they are made known, but perceived to differ from them in every particular ; as in 
the case of the notion of Extension or Space, formerly mentioned,—formed during 
the exercise of various senses, 7. ¢., in consequence of the excitement of various 
VOL. XX. PART IV. 7D 
