THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 255 



a state of the consciousness of him who hears it. 

 If the universe contained only blind and deaf 

 beings, it is impossible for us to imagine but that 

 darkness and silence should reign everywhere. 



It is undoubtedly tiue, then, of all the simple 

 sensations that, as Berkeley says, their " esse is 

 percipi " their being is to be " perceived or 

 known." But that which perceives, or knows, is 

 termed mind or spirit; and therefore the knowl- 

 edge which the senses give us is, after all, a knowl- 

 edge of spiritual phenomena. 



All this was explicitly or implicitly admitted, 

 and, indeed, insisted upon, by Berkeley's contem- 

 poraries, and by no one more strongly than by 

 Locke, who terms smells, tastes, colours, sounds, 

 and the like, " secondary qualities," and observes, 

 with respect to these "secondary qualities," that\ 

 " whatever reality we by mistake attribute to \ 

 them [they] are in truth nothing in the objects 

 themselves." 



And again: "Flame is denominated hot and 

 light; snow, white and cold; and manna, white 

 and sweet, from the ideas they produce in us; 

 which qualities are commonly thought to be the 

 same in these bodies; that those ideas are in us, 

 the one the perfect resemblance of the other as 

 they are in a mirror; and it would by most men 

 be judged very extravagant if one should say 

 otherwise. And yet he that will consider that 

 the same fire that at one distance produces in us 



