422 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book V. 



nefs. And, in the fame manner, I know that, when I open my eyes^ 

 I have a different perception ; and my reafon tells me that the dif- 

 ference muft arife from fomething that comes in at my eyes, which I 

 have opened, and, thro' that channel, affedts my mind. It is in 

 this way that, when I am in a dark place, and open a hole, I have, 

 thro' it, the perception of light that I had not before. If it were poflible 

 to doubt that the perception of the fire, when the eyes are open, was 

 from without, a man might foon convince himfelf, by going near, 

 and putting his hand into it ; for then he would feel mo(t fenfibly the 

 difference betwixt the image of the fire which he had before from 

 within, by the means of the phantafia, and the perception he now 

 has of it from without : So that, if our feeling, as well as our other 

 perceptions, be real, as Mr Hume acknowledges, it muft be admitted 

 that there is a perception of fire, and, for the fame reafon, of other 

 objeds of fenfe from without. And, indeed, if all were from within, 

 and that we might have perceptions without thofe five inlets to the 

 mind we Z2}\jenfesy then a man, who, from his birth, was deprived of 

 all his fenfes, might neverthelefs have all the perceptions we have, 

 and, for any thing I know, many more ; Whereas, the fad: is, 

 that a man, deprived from his birth of one of thefe fenfes, fuch as 

 feeing or hearing, has not the leaft perception or notion of the objeds 

 of that fenfe : Nor can a man of the livelieft imagination have the 

 leaft perception of any corporeal thing, but what refembles the per- 

 ceptions of fome one or other of the fenfes : So that the phantcifta^ 

 tho' a faculty of wonderful power, which performs fuch extraordinary 

 things, both when we are afleep and awake, fupplying, in fome mea- 

 fure, the ufe of our fenfes, is neverthelefs confined in all its operations 

 to objeds fuch as we have perceived by the fenfes. And all the fairy 

 fcenes that it reprefents to us are nothing but fo many images of the 

 material world, very often, indeed, ftrangely and wildly put toge- 

 ther. 



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