we are requiring of them no such extravagant and impossible belief. As well might they conceive that we are inclined to maintain that the chairs are not seen to be external to the table. Now, on the contrary, we hold it to be an undeniable fact (and so does Berkeley,) that all visible objects are seen to be external, and at a distance from one another; that objects at the end of the street, or at the end of the great ranges of astronomy, are all seen to be very far removed from the visible features of our own faces; but we deny that these objects, and our own noses among the number, are seen to be external, or at any distance at all from our own sight; simply for this reason, that our sight is unable to see itself. How can we see a thing to be at any distance whatsoever from a thing which we don't see? Suppose a person were privately to bury a guinea somewhere, and then, pointing to St Paul's, were to ask a friend, "how far is my guinea buried from that cathedral?" What judgment could the person so interrogated form—what answer could he give? obviously none. The guinea might be buried under St Paul's foundation—it might be buried at Timbuctoo. There are no data furnished, from which a judgment may be formed, and a reply given. In the same way, with regard to sight and its objects; the requisite data for a judgment are not supplied to this sense. One datum is given, the visible object; but the other necessary datum is withheld, namely, the visibleness of the organ itself. Therefore, by sight, we can form no judgment at all with respect to the distance at which objects may be placed from the organ; or perhaps it would be more proper to say, that we do form an obscure judgment, to the effect that all visible objects lie within the sphere of the eye; and that where the object is, there also is the organ which apprehends it. Or, to repeat the proof in somewhat different words, we `affirm, that before sight can judge of the distance of objects from itself, or that they are distant at all, it must first localize both itself and the object. But it can only localize these two by seeing them, for sight can do nothing except by seeing. But it cannot see both of them; it can only see one of them. Therefore, it cannot localize both of them, and hence the conclusion is driven irresistibly home, that it can form no judgment that they are in any degree distant from one another.
Touching this point Mr Bailey puts forth an averment, which really makes us blush for the speculative capacity of our country. Speaking of the case of the young man who was couched by Cheselden, he remarks, in support of his own doctrine, that visible objects are seen to be external to the sight; and in commenting on the young man's statement, that "he thought all objects whatever touched his eyes as what he felt did his skin," he remarks, we say, upon this, that it clearly proves "visible objects appeared external even to his body, to say nothing of his mind." External even to his body! Surely Mr Bailey did not expect that the young man was to perceive visible things to be in his visible body. Surely he does not think that the hands of Berkeley's argument would have been strengthened by any such preposterous revelation. Surely he is not such a crude speculator as to imagine that the mind is in the body, like the brain, the liver, or the lungs; and that to bear out Berkeley's theory, it was necessary that the visible universe, of which the visible body is a part, should be seen to be in this mind internal again in its turn to the visible body. Truly this is ravelling the hank of thought with a vengeance.
Berkeley's doctrine with regard to the outness of visible objects, we would state to be this:—All these objects are directly seen to be external to each other, but none of them are seen or can be seen, for the reason above given, to be external to the eye itself. He holds that the knowledge that they are external to the eye—that they possess a real and tangible outness independent of the sight—is entirely brought about by the operation of another sense—the sense of touch. He further maintains that the tactual sensations having been repeatedly experienced along with the visual sensations, which yield no such judgment, these visual sensations come at length of themselves, and in the absence of the tactual impressions, to suggest objects as external to the eye, that is, as endowed with real and tangible outness; and so perfect is the association, that the seer seems to originate out of his own native powers, a knowledge for which he is wholly indebted to his brother the toucher.
Now Mr Bailey views the doctrine in a totally different light. According to him Berkeley's doctrine is, that not only the tangible outness of objects, or
