visible ideas are the Language whereby the governing Spirit on whom we
depend informs us what tangible ideas he is about to imprint upon us, in
case we excite this or that motion in our own bodies. But for a fuller
information in this point I refer to the Essay itself.

45. FOURTH OBJECTION, FROM PERPETUAL ANNIHILATION AND CREATION.--ANSWER.--
Fourthly, it will be objected that from the foregoing principles it
follows things are every moment annihilated and created anew. The objects
of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in
the garden, or the chairs in the parlour, no longer than while there is
somebody by to perceive them. Upon SHUTTING MY EYES all the furniture in
the room is reduced to nothing, and barely upon opening them it is again
created. In ANSWER to all which, I refer the reader to what has been said
in sect. 3, 4, &c., and desire he will consider whether he means anything
by the actual existence of an idea distinct from its being perceived. For
my part, after the nicest inquiry I could make, I am not able to discover
that anything else is meant by those words; and I once more entreat the
reader to sound his own thoughts, and not suffer himself to be imposed on
by words. If he can conceive it possible either for his ideas or their
archetypes to exist without being perceived, then I give up the cause;
but if he cannot, he will acknowledge it is unreasonable for him to stand
up in defence of he knows not what, and pretend to charge on me as an
absurdity the not assenting to those propositions which at bottom have no
meaning in them.

46. ARGUMENTUM AD HOMINEM.--It will not be amiss to observe how far
the received principles of philosophy are themselves chargeable
with those pretended absurdities. (1) It is thought strangely absurd
that upon closing my eyelids all the visible objects around me
should be reduced to nothing; and yet is not this what philosophers