_A._ It is manifest they are so many idols, mere nothings. _B._ When you have looked upon a star or candle with both your eyes, but one of them a little turned awry with your finger, has not there appeared two stars, or two candles? And though you call it a deception of the sight, you cannot deny but there were two images of the object. _A._ It is true, and observed by all men. And the same I say of our faces seen in looking-glasses, and of all dreams, and of all apparitions of dead men’s ghosts; and wonder, since it is so manifest, I never thought upon it before, for it is a very happy encounter, and such as being by everybody well understood, would utterly destroy both idolatry and superstition, and defeat abundance of knaves that cheat and trouble the world with their devices. _B._ But you must not hence conclude that whosoever tells his dream, or sometimes takes his direction from it, is therefore an idolater, or superstitious, or a cheater. For God doth often admonish men by dreams of what they ought to do; yet men must be wary in this case that they trust not dreams with the conduct of their lives farther than by the laws of their country is allowed: for you know what God says, Deut. xiii: _If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams give thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign come to pass, yet if he bid thee serve other Gods let him be put to death_. Here by serving other Gods (since they have chosen God for their King) we are to understand revolting from their King, or disobeying of his laws. Otherwise I see no idolatry nor superstition in following a dream, as many of the Patriarchs in the Old Testament, and of the Saints in the New Testament did. _A._ Yes: their own dreams. But when another man shall dream, or say that he has dreamed, and require me to follow that, he must pardon me if I ask him by what authority, especially if he look I should pay him for it. _B._ But if commanded by the laws you live under, you ought to follow it. But when there proceed from one sound divers echoes, what are those echoes? And when with fingers crossed you touch a small bullet, and think it two; and when the same herb or flower smells well to one and ill to another, and the same at several times, well and ill to yourself, and the like of tastes, what are those echoes, feelings, odours, and tastes? _A._ It is manifest they are all but fancies. But certainly when the sun seems to my eye no bigger than a dish, there is behind it somewhere somewhat else, I suppose a real sun, which creates those fancies, by working, one way or other, upon my eyes, and other organs of my senses, to cause that diversity of fancy. _B._ You say right; and that is it I mean by the word body, which briefly I define to be any thing that hath a being in itself, without the help of sense.