Since we can never, from consideration of the ideas
themselves, with certainty affirm or deny of a body whose complex idea
is made up of yellow, very weighty, ductile, fusible, and fixed,
that it is soluble in aqua regia: and so on of the rest of its
qualities. I would gladly meet with one general affirmation concerning
any quality of gold, that any one can certainly know is true. It will,
no doubt, be presently objected, Is not this an universal proposition,
All gold is malleable? To which I answer, It is a very certain
proposition, if malleableness be a part of the complex idea the word
gold stands for. But then here is nothing affirmed of gold, but that
that sound stands for an idea in which malleableness is contained: and
such a sort of truth and certainty as this it is, to say a centaur
is four-footed. But if malleableness make not a part of the specific
essence the name of gold stands for, it is plain, all gold is
malleable, is not a certain proposition. Because, let the complex idea
of gold be made up of whichsoever of its other qualities you please,
malleableness will not appear to depend on that complex idea, nor
follow from any simple one contained in it: the connexion that
malleableness has (if it has any) with those other qualities being
only by the intervention of the real constitution of its insensible
parts; which, since we know not, it is impossible we should perceive
that connexion, unless we could discover that which ties them
together.
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