But light, heat, whiteness, or coldness, are no
more really in them than sickness or pain is in manna. Take away the
sensation of them; let not the eyes see light or colours, nor the ears
hear sounds; let the palate not taste, nor the nose smell, and all
colours, tastes, odours, and sounds, as they are such particular
ideas, vanish and cease, and are reduced to their causes, i.e. bulk,
figure, and motion of parts.
18. The secondary exist in things only as modes of the primary. A
piece of manna of a sensible bulk is able to produce in us the idea of
a round or square figure; and by being removed from one place to
another, the idea of motion. This idea of motion represents it as it
really is in manna moving: a circle or square are the same, whether in
idea or existence, in the mind or in the manna. And this, both
motion and figure, are really in the manna, whether we take notice
of them or no: this everybody is ready to agree to. Besides, manna, by
tie bulk, figure, texture, and motion of its parts, has a power to
produce the sensations of sickness, and sometimes of acute pains or
gripings in us. That these ideas of sickness and pain are not in the
manna, but effects of its operations on us, and are nowhere when we
feel them not; this also every one readily agrees to. And yet men
are hardly to be brought to think that sweetness and whiteness are not
really in manna; which are but the effects of the operations of manna,
by the motion, size, and figure of its particles, on the eyes and
palate: as the pain and sickness caused by manna are confessedly
nothing but the effects of its operations on the stomach and guts,
by the size, motion, and figure of its insensible parts, (for by
nothing else can a body operate, as has been proved): as if it could
not operate on the eyes and palate, and thereby produce in the mind
particular distinct ideas, which in itself it has not, as well as we
allow it can operate on the guts and stomach, and thereby produce
distinct ideas, which in itself it has not.
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