Second objection. (Sect. 41.) The preceding Principles abolish the distinction between Perception and Imagination—between imagining one's self burnt and actually being burnt.
Answer. Real fire differs from fancied fire: as real pain does from fancied pain; yet no one supposes that real pain any more than imaginary pain can exist unfelt by a sentient intelligence.
Third objection. (Sect. 42-44.) We actually see sensible things existing at a distance from our bodies. Now, whatever is seen existing at a distance must be seen as existing external to us in our bodies, which contradicts the foregoing Principles.
Answer. Distance, or outness, is not visible. It is a conception which is suggested gradually, by our experience of the connexion between visible colours and certain visual sensations that accompany seeing, on the one hand, and our tactual experience, on the other—as was proved in the Essay on Vision, in which the ideality of the visible world is demonstrated[470].
Fourth objection. (Sect. 45-48.) It follows from the New Principles, that the material world must be undergoing continuous annihilation and recreation in the innumerable sentient experiences in which it becomes real.
Answer. According to the New Principles a thing may be realised in the sense-experience of other minds, during intervals of its perception by my mind; for the Principles do not affirm dependence only on this or that [pg 229] mind, but on a living Mind. If this implies a constant creation of the material world, the conception of the universe as in a state of constant creation is not new, and it signally displays Divine Providence.
Fifth objection. (Sect. 49.) If extension and extended Matter can exist only in mind, it follows that extension is an attribute of mind—that mind is extended.
Answer. Extension and other sensible qualities exist in mind, not as modes of mind, which is unintelligible, but as ideas of which Mind is percipient; and this is absolutely inconsistent with the supposition that Mind is itself extended[471].
Sixth objection. (Sect. 50.) Natural philosophy proceeds on the assumption that Matter is independent of percipient mind, and it thus contradicts the New Principles.
Answer. On the contrary, Matter—if it means what exists abstractly, or in independence of all percipient Mind—is useless in natural philosophy, which is conversant exclusively with the ideas or phenomena that compose concrete things, not with empty abstractions.