For, if sugar produce
in us the ideas which we call whiteness and sweetness, we are sure
there is a power in sugar to produce those ideas in our minds, or else
they could not have been produced by it. And so each sensation
answering the power that operates on any of our senses, the idea so
produced is a real idea, (and not a fiction of the mind, which has
no power to produce any simple idea); and cannot but be adequate,
since it ought only to answer that power: and so all simple ideas
are adequate. It is true, the things producing in us these simple
ideas are but few of them denominated by us, as if they were only
the causes of them; but as if those ideas were real beings in them.
For, though fire be called painful to the touch, whereby is
signified the power of producing in us the idea of pain, yet it is
denominated also light and hot; as if light and heat were really
something in the fire, more than a power to excite these ideas in
us; and therefore are called qualities in or of the fire. But these
being nothing, in truth, but powers to excite such ideas in us, I must
in that sense be understood, when I speak of secondary qualities as
being in things; or of their ideas as being the objects that excite
them in us. Such ways of speaking, though accommodated to the vulgar
notions, without which one cannot be well understood, yet truly
signify nothing but those powers which are in things to excite certain
sensations or ideas in us.
Pages:
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547