XIIL] THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION. 349 



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 ni> 

 distinct idea of at all, and are, so, perfectly 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." 1 



I cannot but believe that the judgment of Locke is that 

 which Philosophy will accept as her final decision. 



Suppose that a piano were conscious of sound, and of 

 nothing else. It would become acquainted with a 

 system of nature entirely composed of sounds, and the 

 laws of nature would be the laws of melody and of 

 harmony. It might acquire endless ideas of likeness 

 and unlikeness, of succession, of similarity and dissimi- 

 larity, but it could attain to no conception of space, 

 of distance, or of resistance ; or of figure, or of motion . 



The piano might then reason thus : All my know- 

 ledge consists of sounds and the perception of the rela- 

 tions of sounds ; now the being of sound is to be heard ; 

 and it is inconceivable that the existence of the sounds 

 I know, should depend upon any other existence than 

 that of the mind of a hearing being. 



This would be quite as good reasoning as Berkeley's, 

 and very sound and useful, so far as it defines the limits 

 of the piano's faculties. But for all that, pianos have 

 an existence quite apart from sounds, and the auditory 

 consciousness of our speculative piano would be depen- 

 dent, in the first place, on the existence of a " substance " 

 of brass, wood, and iron, and, in the second, on that of a 



i Locke, "Human Understanding," Book 'II. chap, xxiii. 2. 



