I shall give
some few instances of this cause of our ignorance, and so leave it. It
is evident that the bulk, figure, and motion of several bodies about
us produce in us several sensations, as of colours, sounds, tastes,
smells, pleasure, and pain, &c. These mechanical affections of
bodies having no affinity at all with those ideas they produce in
us, (there being no conceivable connexion between any impulse of any
sort of body and any perception of a colour or smell which we find
in our minds,) we can have no distinct knowledge of such operations
beyond our experience; and can reason no otherwise about them, than as
effects produced by the appointment of an infinitely Wise Agent, which
perfectly surpass our comprehensions. As the ideas of sensible
secondary qualities which we have in our minds, can by us be no way
deduced from bodily causes, nor any correspondence or connexion be
found between them and those primary qualities which (experience shows
us) produce them in us; so, on the other side, the operation of our
minds upon our bodies is as inconceivable. How any thought should
produce a motion in body is as remote from the nature of our ideas, as
how any body should produce any thought in the mind. That it is so, if
experience did not convince us, the consideration of the things
themselves would never be able in the least to discover to us.
Pages:
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838