62 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



who have raised a controversy on the point ; maintaining that 

 we are not warranted in referring our sensations to a cause 

 such as we understand by the word Body, or to any external 

 cause whatever. Though we have no concern here with this 

 controversy, nor with the metaphysical niceties on which it 

 turns, one of the best ways of showing what is meant by Sub 

 stance is, to consider what position it is necessary to take up, 

 in order to maintain its existence against opponents. 



It is certain, then, that a part of our notion of a body 

 consists of the notion of a number of sensations of our own, or 

 of other sentient beings, habitually occurring simultaneously. 

 My conception of the table at which I am writing is com 

 pounded of its visible form and size, which are complex sensa 

 tions of sight ; its tangible form and size, which are complex 

 sensations of our organs of touch and of our muscles ; its 

 weight, which is also a sensation of touch and of the muscles ; 

 its colour, which is a sensation of sight ; its hardness, which is 

 a sensation of the muscles ; its composition, which is another 

 word for all the varieties of sensation which we receive under 

 various circumstances from the wood of which it is made, and 

 so forth. All or most of these various sensations frequently 

 are, and, as we learn by experience, always might be, expe 

 rienced simultaneously, or in many different orders of succes 

 sion, at our own choice : and hence the thought of any one of 

 them makes us think of the others, and the whole becomes 

 mentally amalgamated into one mixed state of consciousness, 

 which, in the language of the school of Locke and Hartley, is 

 termed a Complex Idea. 



Now, there are philosophers who have argued as follows. 

 If we conceive an orange to be divested of its natural colour 

 without acquiring any new one ; to lose its softness without 

 becoming hard, its roundness without becoming square or 

 pentagonal, or of any other regular or irregular figure what 

 ever ; to be deprived of size, of weight, of taste, of smell ; to 

 lose all its mechanical and all its chemical properties, and 

 acquire no new ones ; to become, in short, invisible, intangible, 

 imperceptible not only by all our senses, but by the senses of 

 all other sentient beings, real or possible ; nothing, say these 



