I
easily understand, I say, that the imagination could be thus
constituted if it is true that body exists; and because I can
discover no other convenient mode of explaining it, I
conjecture with probability that body does exist; but this is
only with probability, and although I examine all things with
care, I nevertheless do not find that from this distinct idea
of corporeal nature, which I have in my imagination, I can
derive any argument from which there will necessarily be
deduced the existence of body.
But I am in the habit of imagining many other things
besides this corporeal nature which is the object of pure
mathematics, to wit, the colours, sounds, scents, pain, and
other such things, although less distinctly. And inasmuch as
I perceive these things much better through the senses, by the
medium of which, and by the memory, they seem to have reached
my imagination, I believe that, in order to examine them more
conveniently, it is right that I should at the same time
investigate the nature of sense perception, and that I should
see if from the ideas which I apprehend by this mode of
thought, which I call feeling, I cannot derive some certain
proof of the existence of corporeal objects.
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