[Note: They extirpate the very root of scepticism, "the fallacy
of the senses."--Ed.]

41. SECOND OBJECTION.--ANSWER.--Secondly, it will be OBJECTED
that there is a great difference betwixt real fire for instance,
and the idea of fire, betwixt dreaming or imagining oneself burnt,
and actually being so: if you suspect it to be only the idea of
fire which you see, do but put your hand into it and you will be
convinced with a witness. This and the like may be urged in opposition
to our tenets. To all which the ANSWER is evident from what has
been already said; and I shall only add in this place, that if real
fire be very different from the idea of fire, so also is the real pain
that it occasions very different from the idea of the same pain, and yet
nobody will pretend that real pain either is, or can possibly be, in an
unperceiving thing, or without the mind, any more than its idea.

42. THIRD OBJECTION.--ANSWER.--Thirdly, it will be objected that
we see things actually without or at distance from us, and which
consequently do not exist in the mind; it being absurd that those
things which are seen at the distance of several miles should be
as near to us as our own thoughts. In answer to this, I desire it
may be considered that in a DREAM we do oft perceive things as
existing at a great distance off, and yet for all that, those things
are acknowledged to have their existence only in the mind.

43. But, for the fuller clearing of this point, it may be worth while to
consider how it is that we perceive distance and things placed at a
distance by sight. For, that we should in truth see EXTERNAL space, and
bodies actually existing in it, some nearer, others farther off, seems to
carry with it some opposition to what has been said of their existing