. Why then I shall be obliged to think, they too exist
only in the mind.

     . Is it your opinion the very figure and extension
which you perceive by sense exist in the outward object or
material substance?
     . It is.

     . Have all other animals as good grounds to think the
same of the figure and extension which they see and feel?

     . Without doubt, if they have any thought at all.

     . Answer me, Hylas. Think you the senses were bestowed
upon all animals for their preservation and well-being in life?
or were they given to men alone for this end?

     . I make no question but they have the same use in all
other animals.

     . If so, is it not necessary they should be enabled by
them to perceive their own limbs, and those bodies which are
capable of harming them?

     . Certainly.

     . A mite therefore must be supposed to see his own
foot, and things equal or even less than it, as bodies of some
considerable dimension; though at the same time they appear to
you scarce discernible, or at best as so many visible points?

     . I cannot deny it.

     . And to creatures less than the mite they will seem
yet larger?

     . They will.

     . Insomuch that what you can hardly discern will to
another extremely minute animal appear as some huge mountain?
{189}

     . All this I grant.

     . Can one and the same thing be at the same time in
itself of different dimensions?

     . That were absurd to imagine.

     . But, from what you have laid down it follows that
both the extension by you perceived, and that perceived by the
mite itself, as likewise all those perceived by lesser animals,
are each of them the true extension of the mite's foot; that is
to say, by your own principles you are led into an absurdity.

     . There seems to be some difficulty in the point.

     . Again, have you not acknowledged that no real
inherent property of any object can be changed without some
change in the thing itself?

     . I have.

     . But, as we approach to or recede from an object, the
visible extension varies, being at one distance ten or a hundred
times greater than another. Doth it not therefore follow from
hence likewise that it is not really inherent in the object?

     . I own I am at a loss what to think.

     . Your judgment will soon be determined, if you will
venture to think as freely concerning this quality as you have
done concerning the rest. Was it not admitted as a good argument,
that neither heat nor cold was in the water, because it seemed
warm to one hand and cold to the other?

     . It was.

     . Is it not the very same reasoning to conclude, there
is no extension or figure in an object, because to one eye it
shall seem little, smooth, and round, when at the same time it
appears to the other, great, uneven, and regular?

     . The very same. But does this latter fact ever happen?

     . You may at any time make the experiment, by looking
with one eye bare, and with the other through a microscope.

     . I know not how to maintain it; and yet I am loath to
give up , I see so many odd consequences following
upon such a concession.

     . Odd, say you? After the concessions already made, I
hope you will stick at nothing for its oddness. [But, on the
other hand, should it not seem very odd, if the general reasoning
{190} which includes all other sensible qualities did not also
include extension? If it be allowed that no idea, nor anything
like an idea, can exist in an unperceiving substance, then surely
it follows that no figure, or mode of extension, which we can
either perceive, or imagine, or have any idea of, can be really