[1] ‘Wherever we have no successive perceptions, we have no notion of time.’ (p. 342) [Book I, part II., sec. III.]. [2] P. 492. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.] [3] P. 487. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.] Succession of like feelings mistaken for an identical object: but the feelings, as described, are already such objects. 304. The device by which this _petitio principii_ is covered is one already familiar to us in Hume. In this case it is so palpable that it is difficult to believe he was unconscious of it. As he has ‘to account for the belief of the vulgar with regard to the existence of body,’ he will ‘entirely conform himself to their manner of thinking and expressing themselves;’ in other words, he will assume the fiction in question as the beginning of a process by which its formation is to be accounted for. The vulgar make no distinction between thing and appearance. ‘Those very sensations which enter by the eye or ear are with them the true objects, nor can they readily conceive that this pen or this paper, which is immediately perceived, represents another which is different from, but resembling it. In order therefore to accommodate myself to their notions, I shall at first suppose that there is only a single existence, which I shall call indifferently _object_ and _perception_, according as it shall seem best to suit my purpose, understanding by both of them what any common man may mean by a hat, or shoe, or stone, or any other impression conveyed to him by his senses’. [1] Now it is of course true that the vulgar are innocent of the doctrine of representative ideas. They do not suppose that this pen or this paper, which is immediately perceived, represents another which is different from, but resembling, it; but neither do they suppose that this pen or this paper is a sensation. It is the intellectual transition from this, that, and the other successive sensations to this pen or this paper, as the identical object to which the sensations are referred as qualities, that is unaccountable if, according to Hume’s doctrine, the succession of feelings constitutes our consciousness. In the passage quoted he quietly ignores it, covering his own reduction of felt thing to feeling under the popular identification of the real thing with the perceived. With ‘the vulgar’ that which is ‘immediately perceived’ is the real thing, just because it is not the mere feeling which with Hume it is. But under pretence of provisionally adopting the vulgar view, he entitles himself to treat the mere feeling, because according to him it is that which is immediately perceived, as if it were the permanent identical thing, which according to the vulgar is what is immediately perceived. [1] P. 491. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.] Fiction of identity thus implied as source of the propensity which is to account for it.