SENSATION AND ITS OBJECTS. 103 



accelerate death by the most agonising means. 

 If the sensations which beings possess, were 

 inherent in the external substances, instead of 

 those sensations being multiplied and continued 

 without end, they would be limited and confin- 

 ed to the particular instant when the impression 

 was conveyed ; and unless it were continually 

 repeated, the sensation could never be recalled. 



Facts, such as these which I have stated, and 

 of which there are no end, decidedly ppove that 

 sensation does not abide in the external sub- 

 stance, but in the living and animated being 

 alone ; they prove that the sensation of sweet- 

 ness does not abide in sugar, flavor in a rose, 

 cold in snow, or heat in lire, any more than 

 pain in a whip, or in a sword. These different 

 bodies constitute the agents only, by which im- 

 pressions on the nerves of sense are made. 



Although, in common conversation, we are' 

 in the habit of connecting impression and sen- 

 sation together, as if subsisting in one, and the 

 same subject, nothing can be more incorrect: 

 instead of confounding the impression with the 

 sensation, the one ought to be separated from 

 the other. The question to be determined, is 

 not, whether the sensations inhere in these bo- 

 dies ; we might, with as much propriety, seek for 

 the living among the dead, and ascribe to death 

 the efficient cause of life ; to immobility the cause 

 of motion to ignorance, of design to fatuity, of 



