HYL.  A little patience, Philonous.  I am at present so amazed to see myself ensnared, and as it were imprisoned in the labyrinths you have drawn me into, that on the sudden it cannot be expected I should find my way out.  You must give me time to look about me and recollect myself.

Phil.  Hark; is not this the college bell?

HYL.  It rings for prayers.

Phil.  We will go in then, if you please, and meet here again tomorrow morning.  In the meantime, you may employ your thoughts on this morning’s discourse, and try if you can find any fallacy in it, or invent any new means to extricate yourself.

HYL.  Agreed.

THE SECOND DIALOGUE

HYL.  I beg your pardon, Philonous, for not meeting you sooner.  All this morning my head was so filled with our late conversation that I had not leisure to think of the time of the day, or indeed of anything else.

Philonous.  I am glad you were so intent upon it, in hopes if there were any mistakes in your concessions, or fallacies in my reasonings from them, you will now discover them to me.

HYL.  I assure you I have done nothing ever since I saw you but search after mistakes and fallacies, and, with that view, have minutely examined the whole series of yesterday’s discourse:  but all in vain, for the notions it led me into, upon review, appear still more clear and evident; and, the more I consider them, the more irresistibly do they force my assent.

Phil.  And is not this, think you, a sign that they are genuine, that they proceed from nature, and are conformable to right reason?  Truth and beauty are in this alike, that the strictest survey sets them both off to advantage; while the false lustre of error and disguise cannot endure being reviewed, or too nearly inspected.

HYL.  I own there is a great deal in what you say.  Nor can any one be more entirely satisfied of the truth of those odd consequences, so long as I have in view the reasonings that lead to them.  But, when these are out of my thoughts, there seems, on the other hand, something so satisfactory, so natural and intelligible, in the modern way of explaining things that, I profess, I know not how to reject it.

Phil.  I know not what way you mean.

HYL.  I mean the way of accounting for our sensations or ideas.

Phil.  How is that?

HYL.  It is supposed the soul makes her residence in some part of the brain, from which the nerves take their rise, and are thence extended to all parts of the body; and that outward objects, by the different impressions they make on the organs of sense, communicate certain vibrative motions to the nerves; and these being filled with spirits propagate them to the brain or seat of the soul, which, according to the various impressions or traces thereby made in the brain, is variously affected with ideas.