232. ‘After exclusion of colours, sounds, heat and cold, from the rank of external existences, there remains nothing which can afford us a just and consistent idea of body.’ Now, no one can ‘exclude them from the rank of external existences’ more decisively than Hume. They are impressions, and ‘all impressions are internal and perishing existences, and appear as such.’ Nor does he shirk the consequence, that we have no ‘just and consistent idea of body.’ It is true that we cannot avoid a ‘belief in its existence’--a belief which according to Hume consists in the supposition of ‘a continued existence of objects when they no longer appear to the senses, and of their existence as distinct from the mind and perceptions;’ in other words, as ‘external to and independent of us.’ This belief, however, as he shows, is not given by the senses. That we should feel the existence of an object to be continued when we no longer feel it, is a contradiction in terms; nor is it less so, that we should feel it to be distinct from the feeling. We cannot, then, have an impression of body; and, since we cannot have an idea which does not correspond to an impression or collection of impressions, it follows that we can have no idea of it. How the ‘belief in its existence’ is accounted for by Hume in the absence of any idea of it, is a question to be considered later. [1] Our present concern is to know whether the idea of extension can hold its ground when the idea of body is excluded. [1] See below, paragraph 303, and foll. Can space survive body? Hume derives idea of it from sight and feeling. Significance with him of such derivation.