An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2Locke, John
Philosophy
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2
Locke, John
Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
Let us consider the red and white colours in porphyry. Hinder light
from striking on it, and its colours vanish; it no longer produces any
such ideas in us: upon the return of light it produces these
appearances on us again. Can any one think any real alterations are
made in the porphyry by the presence or absence of light; and that
those ideas of whiteness and redness are really in porphryry in the
light, when it is plain IT HAS NO COLOUR IN THE DARK? It has, indeed,
such a configuration of particles, both night and day, as are apt, by
the rays of light rebounding from some parts of that hard stone, to
produce in us the idea of redness, and from others the idea of
whiteness; but whiteness or redness are not in it at any time, but such
a texture that hath the power to produce such a sensation in us.
20. Pound an almond, and the clear white colour will be altered into a
dirty one, and the sweet taste into an oily one. What real alteration
can the beating of the pestle make in an body, but an alteration of the
texture of it?
21. Explains how water felt as cold by one hand may be warm to the
other.
Ideas being thus distinguished and understood, we may be able to give
an account how the same water, at the same time, may produce the idea
of cold by one hand and of heat by the other: whereas it is impossible
that the same water, if those ideas were really in it, should at the
same time be both hot and cold. For, if we imagine WARMTH, as it is in
our hands, to be nothing but a certain sort and degree of motion in the
minute particles of our nerves or animal spirits, we may understand how
it is possible that the same water may, at the same time, produce the
sensations of heat in one hand and cold in the other; which yet FIGURE
never does, that never producing the idea of a square by one hand which
has produced the idea of a globe by another. But if the sensation of
heat and cold be nothing but the increase or diminution of the motion
of the minute parts of our bodies, caused by the corpuscles of any
other body, it is easy to be understood, that if that motion be greater
in one hand than in the other; if a body be applied to the two hands,
which has in its minute particles a greater motion than in those of one
of the hands, and a less than in those of the other, it will increase
the motion of the one hand and lessen it in the other; and so cause the
different sensations of heat and cold that depend thereon.
22. An excursion into natural philosophy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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