xii.] THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION. 303 



seems to carry with it some opposition to what hath been said of their 

 existing nowhere without the mind. The consideration of this 

 difficulty it \ . 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 immediately of itself per- 

 ceived 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 sensa- 

 tions attending 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 experience, 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 same names ; nor is there 

 any such thing as an idea, or kind of idea, common to both senses. 1 ' 



It will be observed that this proposition expressly 

 declares that extension, figure, and motion, and conse- 

 quently distance, are immediately perceived by sight as 

 well as by touch ; but that visual distance, extension, 

 figure, and motion, are totally different in quality from 

 the ideas of the same name obtained through the sense 

 of touch. And other passages leave no doubt that such 

 was Berkeley's meaning. Thus in the 112th section of 

 the same Essay, he carefully defines the two kinds of 

 distance, one visual, the other tangible : 



" By the distance between any two points nothing more is meant 

 than the number of intermediate points. If the given points are 

 visible, the distance between them is marked out by the number 

 of interjacent visible points; if they are tangible, the distance between 

 them is a line consisting of tangible points." 



