28. What does all this show? Does it not show that the phenomena not dependent upon our will, but subject both as to their existence and accidents to laws which we cannot change, are produced by beings distinct from ourselves? They are not ourselves, for we often exist without them; they are not caused by our will, for they often occur without its concurrence, often also against it; they are not produced one by the other in the purely internal order, for it very frequently happens that a phenomenon which has a thousand times followed another suddenly ceases, however often the former be reproduced. This leads us to examine an hypothesis which will greatly confirm the doctrine we have laid down. CHAPTER V. AN IDEALIST HYPOTHESIS. 29. The system of the Idealists cannot stand without supposing the connection and dependence which we refer to external objects, to exist only within us, and the causality which we attribute to external objects, to belong solely to our own acts. I pull a rope in my chamber, and a bell never fails to ring; or in idealist language, the sensation formed from that union of sensations into which enters what we call the _rope and pulling it_, produces or involves that other, which we call _ringing a bell_. Either from habit or some hidden law, that relation of two phenomena will exist, the never interrupted succession of which causes the illusion in us, whereby we transfer to the real order, what is purely imaginary. This is the most irrational explanation possible, and a few observations will show it to be futile. Today, we pull the rope, and strangely enough, no bell rings: but why not? The causing phenomenon exists; for undoubtedly there passes within us the act called pulling the rope, and yet we pull and pull again, and the bell does not ring. Who has changed the succession of phenomena? Why does not the phenomenon which a little while ago produced another, not produce it now? Nothing new has happened within us, we experience the first phenomenon just as clearly and vividly as before; why, then, is not the second presented? Why is it that formerly we experienced the second whenever we wished, by only exciting the first, and now we cannot? We make the act of our will just as efficaciously as before; who, then, has rendered our will impotent?