20. Pound an almond, and the clear white colour will be altered into
a dirty one, and the sweet taste into an oily one. What real
alteration can the beating of the pestle make in any body, but an
alteration of the texture of it?
21. Explains how water felt as cold by one hand may be warm to the
other. Ideas being thus distinguished and understood, we may be able
to give an account how the same water, at the same time, may produce
the idea of cold by one hand and of heat by the other: whereas it is
impossible that the same water, if those ideas were really in it,
should at the same time be both hot and cold. For, if we imagine
warmth, as it is in our hands, to be nothing but a certain sort and
degree of motion in the minute particles of our nerves or animal
spirits, we may understand how it is possible that the same water may,
at the same time, produce the sensations of heat in one hand and
cold in the other; which yet figure never does, that never
producing- the idea of a square by one hand which has produced the
idea of a globe by another. But if the sensation of heat and cold be
nothing but the increase or diminution of the motion of the minute
parts of our bodies, caused by the corpuscles of any other body, it is
easy to be understood, that if that motion be greater in one hand than
in the other; if a body be applied to the two hands, which has in
its minute particles a greater motion than in those of one of the
hands, and a less than in those of the other, it will increase the
motion of the one hand and lessen it in the other; and so cause the
different sensations of heat and cold that depend thereon.
Pages:
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186