For, our senses being
able to observe a likeness or unlikeness of sensible qualities in
two different external objects, we forwardly enough conclude the
production of any sensible quality in any subject to be an effect of
bare power, and not the communication of any quality which was
really in the efficient, when we find no such sensible quality in
the thing that produced it. But our senses, not being able to discover
any unlikeness between the idea produced in us, and the quality of the
object producing it, we are apt to imagine that our ideas are
resemblances of something in the objects, and not the effects of
certain powers placed in the modification of their primary
qualities, with which primary qualities the ideas produced in us
have no resemblance.
26. Secondary qualities twofold; first, immediately perceivable;
secondly, mediately perceivable. To conclude. Besides those
before-mentioned primary qualities in bodies, viz. bulk, figure,
extension, number, and motion of their solid parts; all the rest,
whereby we take notice of bodies, and distinguish them one from
another, are nothing else but several powers in them, depending on
those primary qualities; whereby they are fitted, either by
immediately operating on our bodies to produce several different ideas
in us; or else, by operating on other bodies, so to change their
primary qualities as to render them capable of producing ideas in us
different from what before they did.
Pages:
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191