266 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 



are seen at the distance of several miles, should be as near 

 to us as our own thoughts. In answer to this, I desire it 

 may be considered that in a dream we do oft perceive things 

 as existing at a great distance off, and yet, for all that, those 

 things are acknowledged to have their existence only in the 

 mind. 



" But for the fuller clearing of this point, it may be 

 worth while to consider how it is that we perceive distance 

 and things placed at a distance by sight. For that we 

 should in truth see external space and bodies actually exist- 

 ing in it, some nearer, others further off, seems to carry with 

 it some opposition to what hath been said of their existing 

 nowhere without the mind. The consideration of this diffi- 

 culty it was that gave birth to my " Essay towards the New 

 Theory of Vision" which was published not long since, 

 wherein it is shown that distance, or outness, is neither im- 

 mediately of itself perceived by sight, nor yet apprehended, 

 or judged of by lines and angles or anything that hath any 

 necessary connection with it ; but that it is only suggested 

 to our thoughts by certain visible ideas and sensations at- 

 tending vision, which, in their own nature, have no manner 

 of similitude or relation either with distance or with things 

 placed at a distance ; but by a connection taught us by ex- 

 perience, they come to signify and suggest them to us, after 

 the same manner that words of any language suggest the 

 ideas they are made to stand for ; insomuch that a man born 

 blind and afterwards made to see, would not, at first sight, 

 think the things he saw to be without his mind or at any 

 distance from him." 



The key-note of the Essay to which Berkeley 

 refers in this passage is to be found in an italicized 

 paragraph of section 127: 



" The extensions, figures, and motions perceived by sight 

 are specifically distinct from the ideas of touch called ~by the 



