cannot pass for an ill-grounded confidence:  for I think nobody can, in earnest, be so sceptical as to be uncertain of the existence of those things which he sees and feels.  At least, he that can doubt so far, (whatever he may have with his own thoughts,) will never have any controversy with me; since he can never be sure I say anything contrary to his own opinion.  As to myself, I think God has given me assurance enough of the existence of things without me:  since, by their different application, I can produce in myself both pleasure and pain, which is one great concernment of my present state.  This is certain:  the confidence that our faculties do not herein deceive us, is the greatest assurance we are capable of concerning the existence of material beings.  For we cannot act anything but by our faculties; nor talk of knowledge itself, but by the help of those faculties which are fitted to apprehend even what knowledge is.

But besides the assurance we have from our senses themselves, that they do not err in the information they give us of the existence of things without us, when they are affected by them, we are further confirmed in this assurance by other concurrent reasons:—­

4.  I. Confirmed by concurrent reasons:—­First, Because we cannot have ideas of Sensation but by the Inlet of the Senses.

It is plain those perceptions are produced in us by exterior causes affecting our senses:  because those that want the organs of any sense, never can have the ideas belonging to that sense produced in their minds.  This is too evident to be doubted:  and therefore we cannot but be assured that they come in by the organs of that sense, and no other way.  The organs themselves, it is plain, do not produce them:  for then the eyes of a man in the dark would produce colours, and his nose smell roses in the winter:  but we see nobody gets the relish of a pineapple, till he goes to the Indies, where it is, and tastes it.

5.  II.  Secondly, Because we find that an Idea from actual Sensatio, and another from memory, are very distinct Perceptions.

Because sometimes I find that I cannot avoid the having those ideas produced in my mind.  For though, when my eyes are shut, or windows fast, I can at pleasure recal to my mind the ideas of light, or the sun, which former sensations had lodged in my memory; so I can at pleasure lay by that idea, and take into my view that of the smell of a rose, or taste of sugar.  But, if I turn my eyes at noon towards the sun, I cannot avoid the ideas which the light or sun then produces in me.  So that there is a manifest difference between the ideas laid up in my memory, (over which, if they were there only, I should have constantly the same power to dispose of them, and lay them by at pleasure,) and those which force themselves upon me, and I cannot avoid having.  And therefore it must