g. could any one discover a
necessary connexion between malleableness and the colour or weight
of gold, or any other part of the complex idea signified by that name,
he might make a certain universal proposition concerning gold in
this respect; and the real truth of this proposition, that all gold is
malleable, would be as certain as of this, the three angles of all
right-lined triangles are all equal to two right ones.
11. The qualities which make our complex ideas of substances
depend mostly on external, remote, and unperceived causes. Had we such
ideas of substances as to know what real constitutions produce those
sensible qualities we find in them, and how those qualities flowed
from thence, we could, by the specific ideas of their real essences in
our own minds, more certainly find out their properties, and
discover what qualities they had or had not, than we can now by our
senses: and to know the properties of gold, it would be no more
necessary that gold should exist, and that we should make
experiments upon it, than it is necessary for the knowing the
properties of a triangle, that a triangle should exist in any
matter, the idea in our minds would serve for the one as well as the
other. But we are so far from being admitted into the secrets of
nature, that we scarce so much as ever approach the first entrance
towards them.
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