to distinguish the former from the latter.  And this plunges us yet deeper in uncertainty.  Again, when we consider the point, we cannot conceive how any idea, or anything like an idea, should have an absolute existence out of a mind:  nor consequently, according to you, how there should be any real thing in nature.  The result of all which is that we are thrown into the most hopeless and abandoned scepticism.  Now, give me leave to ask you, First, Whether your referring ideas to certain absolutely existing unperceived substances, as their originals, be not the source of all this scepticism?  Secondly, whether you are informed, either by sense or reason, of the existence of those unknown originals?  And, in case you are not, whether it be not absurd to suppose them?  Thirdly, Whether, upon inquiry, you find there is anything distinctly conceived or meant by the absolute or external existence of unperceiving substances?  Lastly, Whether, the premises considered, it be not the wisest way to follow nature, trust your senses, and, laying aside all anxious thought about unknown natures or substances, admit with the vulgar those for real things which are perceived by the senses?

HYL.  For the present, I have no inclination to the answering part.  I would much rather see how you can get over what follows.  Pray are not the objects perceived by the senses of one, likewise perceivable to others present?  If there were a hundred more here, they would all see the garden, the trees, and flowers, as I see them.  But they are not in the same manner affected with the ideas I frame in my imagination.  Does not this make a difference between the former sort of objects and the latter?

Phil.  I grant it does.  Nor have I ever denied a difference between the objects of sense and those of imagination.  But what would you infer from thence?  You cannot say that sensible objects exist unperceived, because they are perceived by many.

HYL.  I own I can make nothing of that objection:  but it hath led me into another.  Is it not your opinion that by our senses we perceive only the ideas existing in our minds?

Phil.  It is.

HYL.  But the same idea which is in my mind cannot be in yours, or in any other mind.  Doth it not therefore follow, from your principles, that no two can see the same thing?  And is not this highly, absurd?

Phil.  If the term same be taken in the vulgar acceptation, it is certain (and not at all repugnant to the principles I maintain) that different persons may perceive the same thing; or the same thing or idea exist in different minds.  Words are of arbitrary imposition; and, since men are used to apply the word same where no distinction or variety is perceived, and I do not pretend to alter their perceptions, it follows that, as men have said before, several saw the same thing,