t consider the point, and then
confess ingenuously, whether light and colours, tastes, sounds, &c. are
not all equally passions or sensations in the soul. You may indeed call
them EXTERNAL OBJECTS, and give them in words what subsistence you
please. But, examine your own thoughts, and then tell me whether it be
not as I say?

HYL. I acknowledge, Philonous, that, upon a fair observation of what
passes in my mind, I can discover nothing else but that I am a thinking
being, affected with variety of sensations; neither is it possible to
conceive how a sensation should exist in an unperceiving substance. But
then, on the other hand, when I look on sensible things in a different
view, considering them as so many modes and qualities, I find it
necessary to suppose a MATERIAL SUBSTRATUM, without which they cannot
be conceived to exist.

PHIL. MATERIAL SUBSTRATUM call you it? Pray, by which of your senses
came you acquainted with that being?

HYL. It is not itself sensible; its modes and qualities only being
perceived by the senses.

PHIL. I presume then it was by reflexion and reason you obtained
the idea of it?

HYL. I do not pretend to any proper positive IDEA of it. However, I
conclude it exists, because qualities cannot be conceived to exist
without a support.

PHIL. It seems then you have only a relative NOTION of it, or that
you conceive it not otherwise than by conceiving the relation it bears to
sensible qualities?

HYL. Right.

PHIL. Be pleased therefore to let me know wherein that relation
consists.

HYL. Is it not sufficiently expressed in the term SUBSTRATUM, or
SUBSTANCE?

PHIL. If so, the word SUBSTRATUM should import that it is spread
under the sensible qualities or accidents?

HYL. True.

PHIL. And consequently under extension?

HYL. I own it.

PHIL. It is therefore somewhat in its own nature entirely distinct
from extension?

HYL. I tell you, extension is only a mode, and Matter is something that
supports modes. And is it not evident the thing supported is different
from the thing supporting?

PHIL. So that something distinct from, and exclusive of, extension is
supposed to be the SUBSTRATUM of extension?

HYL. Just so.

PHIL. Answer me, Hylas. Can a thing be spread without extension? or is
not the idea of extension necessarily included in SPREADING?

HYL. It is.

PHIL. Whatsoever therefore you suppose spread under anything must have
in itself an extension dist