When I view this table and that chimney, nothing is present to me but particular perceptions, which are of a like nature with all the other perceptions.  This is the doctrine of philosophers.  But this table, which is present to me, and the chimney, may and do exist separately.  This is the doctrine of the vulgar, and implies no contradiction.  There is no contradiction, therefore, in extending the same doctrine to all the perceptions.

In general, the following reasoning seems satisfactory.  All ideas are borrowed from preceding perceptions.  Our ideas of objects, therefore, are derived from that source.  Consequently no proposition can be intelligible or consistent with regard to objects, which is not so with regard to perceptions.  But it is intelligible and consistent to say, that objects exist distinct and independent, without any common simple substance or subject of inhesion.  This proposition, therefore, can never be absurd with regard to perceptions.

When I turn my reflection on myself, I never can perceive this self without some one or more perceptions; nor can I ever perceive any thing but the perceptions.  It is the composition of these, therefore, which forms the self.  We can conceive a thinking being to have either many or few perceptions.  Suppose the mind to be reduced even below the life of an oyster.  Suppose it to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger.  Consider it in that situation.  Do you conceive any thing but merely that perception?  Have you any notion of self or substance?  If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give you that notion.

The annihilation, which some people suppose to follow upon death, and which entirely destroys this self, is nothing but an extinction of all particular perceptions; love and hatred, pain and pleasure, thought and sensation.  These therefore must be the same with self; since the one cannot survive the other.

Is self the same with substance?  If it be, how can that question have place, concerning the subsistence of self, under a change of substance?  If they be distinct, what is the difference betwixt them?  For my part, I have a notion of neither, when conceived distinct from particular perceptions.

Philosophers begin to be reconciled to the principle, that we have no idea of external substance, distinct from the ideas of particular qualities.  This must pave the way for a like principle with regard to the mind, that we have no notion of it, distinct from the particular perceptions.

So far I seem to be attended with sufficient evidence.  But having thus loosened all our particular perceptions, when I proceed to explain the principle of connexion, which binds them together, and makes us attribute to them a real simplicity and identity; I am sensible, that my account is very defective, and that nothing but the seeming evidence of the precedent reasonings coued have induced me to receive it.  If perceptions