remain equally inexplicable with or without this supposition.  If therefore it were possible for bodies to exist without the mind, yet to hold they do so, must needs be a very precarious opinion; since it is to suppose, without any reason at all, that God has created innumerable beings that are entirely useless, and serve to no manner of purpose.

20.  Dilemma.—­In short, if there were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever come to know it; and if there were not, we might have the very same reasons to think there were that we have now.  Suppose—­what no one can deny possible—­an intelligence without the help of external bodies, to be affected with the same train of sensations or ideas that you are, imprinted in the same order and with like vividness in his mind.  I ask whether that intelligence has not all the reason to believe the existence of corporeal substances, represented by his ideas, and exciting them in his mind, that you can possibly have for believing the same thing?  Of this there can be no question—­which one consideration were enough to make any reasonable person suspect the strength of whatever arguments be may think himself to have, for the existence of bodies without the mind.

21.  Were it necessary to add any further proof against the existence of matter after what has been said, I could instance several of those errors and difficulties (not to mention impieties) which have sprung from that tenet.  It has occasioned numberless controversies and disputes in philosophy, and not a few of far greater moment in religion.  But I shall not enter into the detail of them in this place, as well because I think arguments A posteriori are unnecessary for confirming what has been, if I mistake not, sufficiently demonstrated A priori, as because I shall hereafter find occasion to speak somewhat of them.

22.  I am afraid I have given cause to think I am needlessly prolix in handling this subject.  For, to what purpose is it to dilate on that which may be demonstrated with the utmost evidence in a line or two, to any one that is capable of the least reflexion?  It is but looking into your own thoughts, and so trying whether you can conceive it possible for a sound, or figure, or motion, or colour to exist without the mind or unperceived.  This easy trial may perhaps make you see that what you contend for is a downright contradiction.  Insomuch that I am content to put the whole upon this issue:—­If you can but conceive it possible for one extended movable substance, or, in general, for any one idea, or anything like an idea, to exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it, I shall readily give up the cause.  And, as for all that COMPAGES of external bodies you contend for, I shall grant you its existence, though