xiii.] THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION. 327 



So much for pain. Now let us consider an ordinary 

 sensation. Let the point of the pin be gently rested 

 upon the skin, and I become aware of a feeling or con- 

 dition of consciousness quite different from the former 

 the sensation of what I call "touch." Nevertheless this 

 touch is plainly just as much in myself as the pain was. 

 I cannot for a moment conceive this something which 

 I call touch as existing apart from myself, or a being 

 capable of the same feelings as myself. And the same 

 reasoning applies to all the other simple sensations. A 

 moment's reflection is sufficient to convince one that the 

 smell, and the taste, and the yellowness, of which we 

 become aware when an orange is smelt, tasted, and seen, 

 are as completely states of our consciousness as is the 

 pain which arises if the orange happens to be too sour. 

 Nor is it less clear that every sound is a state of the 

 consciousness of him who hears it. If the universe 

 contained only blind and deaf beings, it is impossible 

 ior us to imagine but that darkness and silence should 

 reign everywhere. 



It is undoubtedly true, then, of all the simple sensa- 

 tions that, as Berkeley says, their " esse is percipi"^- 

 their being is to be " perceived or known." But that 

 "which perceives, or knows, is mind or spirit ; and there- 

 fore that knowledge which the senses give us is, after all, 

 a knowledge of spiritual phenomena. 



All this was explicitly or implicitly admitted, and, 

 indeed, insisted upon, by Berkeley's contemporaries, 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 attri- 

 bute to them [they] are in truth nothing in the objects 

 themselves." 



And again : " Flame is denominated hot and light ; 



