THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 283 



not what support of such qualities, which are capable of 

 producing simple ideas in us, which qualities are commonly 

 called accidents. 



" If any one should be asked, what is the subject wherein 

 colour or weight inheres! he would have nothing to say but 

 the solid extended parts ; and if he were demanded what is 

 it that solidity and extension inhere in ? he would not be in 

 much better case than the Indian before mentioned, who, 

 urging that the world was supported by a great elephant, 

 was asked what the elephant rested on I to which his answer 

 was, a great tortoise. But being again pressed to know 

 what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise ? replied, 

 something, he knew not what. And thus here, as in all 

 other cases when we use words without having clear and 

 distinct ideas, we talk like children, who, being questioned 

 what such a thing is, readily give this satisfactory answer, 

 that it is something ; which in truth signifies no more when 

 so used, either by children or men, but that they know not 

 what, and that the thing they pretend to talk and know of 

 is what they have no distinct idea of at all, and are, so, per- 

 fectly ignorant of it and in the dark. The idea, then, we 

 have, to which we give the general name substance, being 

 nothing but the supposed but unknown support of those 

 qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot exist 

 sine re substante, without something to support them, we 

 call that support substantia, which, according to the true 

 import of the word, is, in plain English, standing under or 

 upholding." * 



I cannot but believe that the judgment of 

 Locke is that which Philosophy will accept as her 

 final decision. 



Suppose that a rational piano were conscious of 

 sound, and of nothing else. It would be acquainted 



* Locke, Human Understanding, Book II. chap, xxiii. 2. 



