Since, however, precisely the same series of changes must take place in nature, whether we class the sun, the flower, the cannon, as the objects of sense, or merely the light, the odorous particles, and the vibrating air, it may perhaps be thought, that the distinction now made is only a _verbal_ one, of no real importance. But it will not appear such to those who are conversant with the different theories of perception which we are afterwards to review; many of which, that have had the greatest sway, and a sway the most fatal to the progress of intellectual philosophy, appear, to me, to have arisen entirely, or at least chiefly, from this very misconception as to the real external object of sense. It is sufficient at present to allude to the effect, which the mere _distance_ of the supposed object must have had, in giving room to all the follies of imagination to fill up the interval. It may be necessary, however, to remark by the way, that though I do not conceive the bodies which act through a medium, as it is said to be the real objects of the particular sense;--the immense orb of the sun, for example, in all its magnitude, to be the object of that small organ by which we are sensible of light; or the cannon, which exists we know not where, to be the object of that organ by which we are sensible of sound;--I am still far from objecting to the popular and very convenient phraseology, by which we speak of seeing the sun, and hearing the cannon--a phraseology that expresses briefly a reference, which could not otherwise be expressed but by a very awkward circumlocution, and to make any innovation in which would be as absurd, as to reject the popular phrases of the sun's rising and setting merely because they are inconsistent with our astronomical belief. The most rigid philosophy can require no more, than that, when we talk of the sun's actual setting, we should mean by it, only a certain position relative to that great luminary at which the earth arrives in its diurnal revolution,--and that, when we talk of seeing it descend, we should mean nothing more, than that we see light of a certain brilliancy, from which we infer the existence and relative position of the orb that has projected it.