as thereby to produce in me the idea of light or heat; and in the other it is able fo to alter the bulk, figure, texture, or motion of the infenfible parts of the wax, as to make them fit to produce in me the distinct ideas of white and fluid. $25. THE reafon why the one are ordinarily taken for real qua lities, and the other only for bare powers, feems to be, becaufe the ideas we have of diftinct colours, founds, &c. containing nothing at all in them of bulk, figure, or motion, we are not apt to think them the effects of thefe primary qualities, which appear not to our fenfes to operate in their production, and with which they have not any apparent congruity, or conceivable connection. Hence it is that we are fo forward to imagine, that thofe ideas are the refemblances of fomething really exifting in the objects themfelves; fince fenfation dif covers nothing of bulk, figure, or motion of parts in their production, nor can reafon fhow how bodies, by their bulk, figure, and motion, fhould produce in the mind the ideas of blue or yellow, &c. But in the other cafe, in the operations of bodies, changing the qualities one of another, we plainly difcover, that the quality produced hath commonly no resemblance with any thing in the thing producing it, wherefore we look on it as a bare effect of power. For though receiving the idea of heat or light from the fun, we are apt to think it is a perception and refemblance of fuch a quality in the fun, yet when we fee wax, or a fair face, receive change of colour from the fun, we cannot imagine that to be the perception or refemblance of any thing in the fun, because we find not thofe different colours in the fun itself. For our fenfes being able to obferve a likenefs or unlikeness of fenfible qualities in two different external objects, we forwardly enough conclude the production of any fenfible quality in any fubject, to be an effect of bare power, and not the communication of any quality, which was really in the efficient, when we find no fuch fenfible quality in the thing that produced it. But our fenfes, not being able to difcover any unlikeness between the idea produced in us, and the quality of the object producing it, we are apt to imagine, that our ideas are refemblances of fomething in the objects, and not the effects of certain powers placed in the modification of their primary qualities, with which primary qualities the ideas produced in us have no refemblance. 26. Secondary Qualities twofold; First, immediately perceivable; Secondly, mediately perceivable. To conclude, befides thofe before-mentioned primary qualities in bodies, viz. bulk, figure, extenfion, number, and motion of their folid parts; all the reft, whereby we take notice of bodies, and diftinguish them one from another, are nothing elfe but feveral powers in them depending on thofe primary qualities, whereby they are fitted, either by immediately operating on our bodies, to produce feveral different ideas in us, or elfe by operating on other bodies, fo to change their primary qualities, as to render them capable of producing ideas in us different from what before they did. The former of thefe, I think, may be called fecondary qualities, immediately perceivable; the latter, fecondary qualities, mediately perceivable. CHAP. IX. OF PERCEPTION. §1. Perception the firft fimple Idea of Reflection. PERCEPTION, as it is the first faculty of the mind, exercised about our ideas, fo it is the first and fimpleft idea we have from reflection, and is by fome called thinking in general; though thinking, in the propriety of the English tongue, fignifies that fort of operation of the mind about its ideas, wherein the mind is active, where it, with fome degree of voluntary attention, confidere any thing: For in bare naked perception, the mind is, for the most part, only paffive; and what it perceives, it cannot avoid perceiving. 2. Is only when the Mind receives the impreffion. WHAT perception is, every one will know better, by reflecting on what he does Limfelf, when he fees, hears, feels, &c. or thinks, than by any difcourfe of mine. Whoever reflects on what paffes in his own mind, cannot mifs it; and if he does not reflect, all the words in the world cannot make him have any notion of it.. $3. THIS is certain, that whatever alterations are made in the body, if they reach not the mind; whatever impreflions are made on the outward parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no perception. Fire may burn our bodies, with no other effect than it does a billet, unless the motion be continued to the brain, and there the sense of heat, or idea of pain, be produced in the mind, wherein consists actual percep tion. $ 4. How often may a man obferve in himself, that whilst his mind is intently employed in the contemplation of fome objects, and curioufly furveying fome ideas that are there, it takes no notice of impreffions of founding bodies made upon the organ of hearing, with the fame alteration that uses to be for the producing the idea of found? A fuflicient impulfe there may be on the organ, but it not reaching the obfervation of the mind, there follows no perception; and though the motion that uses to produce the idea of found, be made in the car, yet no found is heard. Want of fenfation in this cafe, is not through any defect in the organ, or that the man's ears are lefs affected than at other times when he does hear; but that which uses to produce the idea, though conveyed in by the ufual organ, not being taken notice of in the understanding, and fo imprinting no idea on the mind, there follows no fenfation: So that wherever there is fenfe, or perception, there fome idea is actually produced, and prefent in the understanding. § 5. Children, though they have Ideas in the Womb, have none Innate. THEREFORE I doubt not but children, by the exercise of their fenfes about objects that affect them in the womb, receive fome few ideas before they are born, as the una voidable effects, either of the bodies that environ them,) 115 or elfe of thofe wants or diseases they fuffer; among which (if one may conjecture concerning things not very capable of examination), I think the ideas of hunger and warmth are two, which probably are fome of the first that children have, and which they fcarce ever' part with again. § 6. BUT though it be reafonable to imagine that children receive fome ideas before they come into the world, yet thefe fimple ideas are far from those innate principles which fome contend for, and we above have rejected, Thefe here mentioned being the effects of fenfation, are only from fome affections of the body, which happen to them there, and fo depend on fomething exterior to the mind, no otherwise differing in their manner of production from other ideas derived from sense, but only in the precedency of time; whereas thofe innate principles are fuppofed to be quite of another nature, not coming into the mind by any accidental alterations in, or operations on the body, but, as it were, original characters impreffed upon it, in the very first moment of its being and conftitution. § 7. Which Ideas firft, is not evident. As there are fome ideas which we may reasonably fuppofe may be introduced into the minds of children in the womb, fubfervient to the neceflities of their life and being there, fo after they are born, thofe ideas are the earliest imprinted, which happen to be the fenfible qualities which firft occur to them; amongft which, light is not the leaft confiderable, nor of the weakest effiсасу. And how covetous the mind is to be furnished with all fuch ideas as have no pain accompanying them, may be a little gueffed, by what is obfervable in children new-born, who always turn their eyes to that part from whence the light comes, lay them how you please. But the ideas that are moft familiar at first being various, according to the divers circumftances of childrens first entertainment in the world; the order wherein the feveral ideas come at firft into the mind, is very various and uncertain also, neither is it much material to know it. $8. Ideas of Senfation often changed by the Judgment. WE are farther to confider concerning perception, that the ideas we receive by fenfation are often in grown people altered by the judgment, without our taking notice of it. When we fet before our eyes a round globe, of any uniform colour, v. g. gold, alabafter, or jet, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in our mind, is of a flat circle variously fhadowed, with feveral degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes. But we having by ufe been accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us, what alterations are made in the reflections of light by the difference of the fenfible figures of bodies; the judgment presently, by an habitual cuftom, alters the appearances into their caufes; fo that from that which truly is variety of fhadow or colour, collecting the figure, it makes it pafs for a mark of figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure and an uniform colour; when the idea we receive from thence is only a plane varioufly coloured, as is evident in painting. To which purpose I fhall here infert a problem of that very ingenious and ftudious promoter of real knowledge, the learned and worthy Mr. Molineux, which he was pleafed to fend me in a letter fome months fince; and it is this: Suppofe a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to diftinguish between a cube and a phere of the fame metal, and nighly of the fame bigness, fo as to tell when he felt one and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere: Suppose then the cube and fphere placed on a table, and the blind man to be made to fee: Query, Whether by his fight before he touched them, be could now diffinguish and tell, which is the globe; which the cube? To which the acute and judicious propofer anfwers; Not: For though he has obtained the experience of, how a globe, how a cube affects his touch; yet he has not yet attained the experience, that that which affects his touch fo er fo, muft affect his fight fo or fo; or that a protuberant angle in the cube, that preffed his hand unequally, fhall ep |