thoughts, or conceive apart from each other, those things which, perhaps
I never perceived by sense so divided. Thus, I imagine the trunk of a
human body without the limbs, or conceive the smell of a rose without
thinking on the rose itself. So far, I will not deny, I can abstract--if
that may properly be called ABSTRACTION which extends only to the
conceiving separately such objects as it is possible may really exist or
be actually perceived asunder. But my conceiving or imagining power does
not extend beyond the possibility of real existence or perception. Hence,
as it is impossible for me to see or feel anything without an actual
sensation of that thing, so is it impossible for me to conceive in my
thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct from the sensation or
perception of it.[Note.]

[Note: "In truth the object and the sensation are the same thing, and
cannot therefore be abstracted from each other--Edit 1710."]

6. Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need
only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be,
viz., that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word
all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not
any subsistence without a mind, that their BEING (ESSE) is to be perceived
or known; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by
me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other CREATED SPIRIT, they
must either have no existence at all, OR ELSE SUBSIST IN THE MIND OF SOME
ETERNAL SPIRIT--it being perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the
absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an
existence independent of a spirit [Note.]. To be convinced of which, the
reader need only reflect, and try to separate in his own thoughts the
being of a sensible thing from its being perceived.