I do not say that the nature of
light consists in very small round globules; nor of whiteness in
such a texture of parts as gives a certain rotation to these
globules when it reflects them: for I am not now treating physically
of light or colours. But this I think I may say, that I cannot (and
I would be glad any one would make intelligible that he did), conceive
how bodies without us can any ways affect our senses, but by the
immediate contact of the sensible bodies themselves, as in tasting and
feeling, or the impulse of some sensible particles coming from them,
as in seeing, hearing, and smelling; by the different impulse of which
parts, caused by their different size, figure, and motion, the variety
of sensations is produced in us.
12. Particles of light and simple ideas of colour. Whether then they
be globules or no; or whether they have a verticity about their own
centres that produces the idea of whiteness in us; this is certain,
that the more particles of light are reflected from a body, fitted
to give them that peculiar motion which produces the sensation of
whiteness in us; and possibly too, the quicker that peculiar motion
is,- the whiter does the body appear from which the greatest number
are reflected, as is evident in the same piece of paper put in the
sunbeams, in the shade, and in a dark hole; in each of which it will
produce in us the idea of whiteness in far different degrees.
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