Phil.  Since I cannot frame abstract ideas at all, it is plain I cannot frame them by the help of pure intellect; whatsoever faculty you understand by those words.  Besides, not to inquire into the nature of pure intellect and its spiritual objects, as virtue, reason, god, or the like, thus much seems manifest—­that sensible things are only to be perceived by sense, or represented by the imagination.  Figures, therefore, and extension, being originally perceived by sense, do not belong to pure intellect:  but, for your farther satisfaction, try if you can frame the idea of any figure, abstracted from all particularities of size, or even from other sensible qualities.

HYL.  Let me think a little—­I do not find that I can.

Phil.  And can you think it possible that should really exist in nature which implies a repugnancy in its conception?

HYL.  By no means.

Phil.  Since therefore it is impossible even for the mind to disunite the ideas of extension and motion from all other sensible qualities, doth it not follow, that where the one exist there necessarily the other exist likewise?

HYL.  It should seem so.

Phil.  Consequently, the very same arguments which you admitted as conclusive against the Secondary Qualities are, without any farther application of force, against the Primary too.  Besides, if you will trust your senses, is it not plain all sensible qualities coexist, or to them appear as being in the same place?  Do they ever represent a motion, or figure, as being divested of all other visible and tangible qualities?

HYL.  You need say no more on this head.  I am free to own, if there be no secret error or oversight in our proceedings hitherto, that all sensible qualities are alike to be denied existence without the mind.  But, my fear is that I have been too liberal in my former concessions, or overlooked some fallacy or other.  In short, I did not take time to think.

Phil.  For that matter, Hylas, you may take what time you please in reviewing the progress of our inquiry.  You are at liberty to recover any slips you might have made, or offer whatever you have omitted which makes for your first opinion.

HYL.  One great oversight I take to be this—­that I did not sufficiently distinguish the object from the sensation.  Now, though this latter may not exist without the mind, yet it will not thence follow that the former cannot.

Phil.  What object do you mean? the object of the senses?

HYL.  The same.

Phil.  It is then immediately perceived?

HYL.  Right.

Phil.  Make me to understand the difference between what is immediately perceived and a sensation.

HYL.  The sensation I take to be an act of the mind perceiving; besides which, there is something perceived; and this I call the object.  For example, there is red and yellow on that tulip.  But then the act of perceiving those colours is in me only, and not in the tulip.