of consciousness, and considers the existence of such an object to 

 have been untrue. To ;i person viewing objects through coloured 

 glass, all filings may appear green: a madman may address his 

 plebeian friend as the Emperor of China, or as the Devil, or as 

 Jupiter, as a fish, or a lion. The real objects in these cases 

 giving rise to different convictions, are the same; our investiga- 

 tion of natural truth, or consciousness, requires that we should 

 say why the same objects produce different convictions. 



11. The palsy of the arm does not affect the temperature of 

 the water; the laudanum has no power to form such an external 

 as a bullock's head ; the disorder of the mind of the madman 

 cannot convert a plebeian acquaintance into an emperor, a fish, &c. ; 

 the colour of the glass, through which objects are viewed, does 

 not change the colour of the objects, &c. If then the same 

 objects produce different convictions, it follows that the difference 

 is in the constitution, or properties of the faculties, which are 

 susceptible of the conviction, or in the medium through which 

 this conviction is obtained. Hence it follows, further, that the 

 consciousness of an existence is the result of a relation between 

 the external world and the faculties by which we become 

 acquainted with it; that the conviction is according to this 

 relation; that if the object is changed, the consciousness of it will 

 also be changed; that if the object is the same, but produces in 

 different persons, or at different times, a different consciousness, 

 that then it operates upon a different disposition of properties, or 

 upon a different state of faculties. The consciousness then, or 

 idea, which we have of an external is according to the nature of 

 the external, and the state of the faculties, or of the intellectual 

 constitution with which it is related. 



12. As consciousness is always the result of a relation, so the 

 consciousness will always be according to the nature, or state of 

 the constituents of the relation. If the external objects are the 

 came, in relation with the same senses or faculties, they will pro- 

 duce the same convictions; but if the same external objects are 

 related with other senses or faculties, they will produce different 

 convictions. Now the evidence, so far as it respects truth or 

 reality, is the same in every case; and consequently all conscious- 

 ness, and therefore all truth, is relative. But it is agreed among 

 mankind, that the only consciousness which shall be admitted as 

 truth, is that which is produced by the operation of externals 

 upon such a state or pre-disposition of the senses as is general, 

 though not universal, among mankind. This is artificial truth, 

 which is a limitation only of the natural truth, and being both 

 produced in the same way, and resting upon precisely the same 

 foundation, they are in nature of course both equally true. The 

 difference between a madman who errs in his senses, and one of 

 an otherwise diseased or defective sense, is that the consciousness 

 of the madman is admitted without respect to artificial truth; that 

 is, he does not acquiesce against his conviction in the truth which 



