60. As usual, Locke disguises this difficulty from himself, because in answering the question he alters it. The question, _as he asks it_, is whether, given the idea, we can have posterior assurance of something else corresponding to it. The question, _as he answers it_, is whether the idea includes the consciousness of a real thing as a constituent; and the answer consists in the simple assertion, variously repeated, that it does. It is clear, however, that this answer to the latter question does not answer, but renders unmeaning, the question as it is originally asked. If, according to Locke’s own showing, there is nowhere for anything to be found by us but in our ‘ideas’ or our consciousness--if the _thing_ is given in and with the idea, so that the idea is merely the thing _ex parte nostrâ_--then to ask if the idea agrees with the thing is as futile as to ask whether hearing agrees with sound, or the voice with the words it utters. That the thing is so given is implied throughout Locke’s statement of the ‘assurance we have of the existence of material beings,’ as well as of the confirmations of this assurance. If the ‘idea which I call white’ means the knowledge that ‘the property or accident (_i.e._ whose appearance before my eyes always causes that idea) doth really exist and hath a being without me,’ then consciousness of existence--outward, permanent, substantive, and causative existence--is involved in the idea, and no ulterior question of agreement between idea and existence can properly arise. But unless the simple idea is so interpreted, the senses have no testimony to give. If it is so interpreted, no extraneous ‘reason to rely upon the testimony’ can be discovered, for such reason can only be a repetition of the testimony itself. Confirmations of the testimony turn upon the distinction between ‘impression’ and ‘idea’.