this case any exercise of the thought, or any action, properly speaking, but a mere passive admission of the impressions through the organs of sensation. According to this way of thinking, we ought not to receive as reasoning any of the observations we may make concerning identity and the relation of time and place; since in none of them can the mind go beyond what is immediately present to the senses, either to discover the real existence or the relations of objects.”
The whole force of this passage depends upon the tacit presupposition of the ‘mind’ as a passively receptive substance and of its ‘impression’ as forming its private world of accidents. There then remains nothing except the immediacy of these private attributes with their private relations which are also attributes of the mind. Hume explicitly repudiates this substantial view of mind.
But then, what is the force of the last clause of the last sentence, “since . . . objects?” The only reason for dismissing ‘impressions’ from having any demonstrative force in respect to ‘the real existence or the relations of objects,’ is the implicit notion that such impressions are mere private attributes of the mind. Santayana’s book, Scepticism and Animal Faith, to which I have al-
