g. that a violet,
by the impulse of such insensible particles of matter, of peculiar
figures and bulks, and in different degrees and modifications of their
motions, causes the ideas of the blue colour, and sweet scent of
that flower to be produced in our minds. It being no more impossible
to conceive that God should annex such ideas to such motions, with
which they have no similitude, than that he should annex the idea of
pain to the motion of a piece of steel dividing our flesh, with
which that idea hath no resemblance.
14. They depend on the primary qualities. What I have said
concerning colours and smells may be understood also of tastes and
sounds, and other the like sensible qualities; which, whatever reality
we by mistake attribute to them, are in truth nothing in the objects
themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us; and depend
on those primary qualities, viz. bulk, figure, texture, and motion
of parts as I have said.
15. Ideas of primary qualities are resemblances; of secondary,
not. From whence I think it easy to draw this observation,- that the
ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, and
their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves, but the ideas
produced in us by these secondary qualities have no resemblance of
them at all. There is nothing like our ideas, existing in the bodies
themselves.
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