8. Our ideas and the qualities of bodies. Whatsoever the mind
perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception,
thought, or understanding, that I call idea; and the power to
produce any idea in our mind, I call quality of the subject wherein
that power is. Thus a snowball having the power to produce in us the
ideas of white, cold, and round,- the power to produce those ideas
in us, as they are in the snowball, I call qualities; and as they
are sensations or perceptions in our understandings, I call them
ideas; which ideas, if I speak of sometimes as in the things
themselves, I would be understood to mean those qualities in the
objects which produce them in us.
9. Primary qualities of bodies. Qualities thus considered in
bodies are,
First, such as are utterly inseparable from the body, in what
state soever it be; and such as in all the alterations and changes
it suffers, all the force can be used upon it, it constantly keeps;
and such as sense constantly finds in every particle of matter which
has bulk enough to be perceived; and the mind finds inseparable from
every particle of matter, though less than to make itself singly be
perceived by our senses: v.g. Take a grain of wheat, divide it into
two parts; each part has still solidity, extension, figure, and
mobility: divide it again, and it retains still the same qualities;
and so divide it on, till the parts become insensible; they must
retain still each of them all those qualities.
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