THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 281 



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 ? 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 sig- 

 nifies 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, 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 rational piano were conscious of 

 sound, and of nothing else. It would be 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 dissimilarity, but it 



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



