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
The reason why the one are ordinarily taken for real qualities, and the
other only for bare powers, seems to be because the ideas we have of
distinct colours, sounds, &c. containing nothing at all in them of
bulk, figure, or motion we are not apt to think them the effects of
these primary qualities; which appear not, to our senses, to operate in
their production, and with which they have not any apparent congruity
or conceivable connexion. Hence it is that we are so forward as to
imagine, that those ideas are the resemblances of something really
existing in the objects themselves since sensation discovers nothing of
bulk, figure, or motion of parts in their production; nor can reason
show how bodies BY THEIR BULK, FIGURE, AND MOTION, should produce in
the mind the ideas of blue or yellow, &c. But, in the other case in the
operations of bodies changing the qualities one of another, we plainly
discover that the quality produced hath commonly no resemblance with
anything in the thing producing it; wherefore we look on it as a bare
effect of power. For, through receiving the idea of heat or light from
the sun, we are apt to think IT is a perception and resemblance of such
a quality in the sun; yet when we see wax, or a fair face, receive
change of colour from the sun, we cannot imagine THAT to be the
reception or resemblance of anything in the sun, because we find not
those different colours in the sun itself. For, our senses being able
to observe a likeness or unlikeness of sensible qualities in two
different external objects, we forwardly enough conclude the production
of any sensible quality in any subject to be an effect of bare power,
and not the communication of any quality which was really in the
efficient, when we find no such sensible quality in the thing that
produced it. But our senses, not being able to discover 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 resemblances of
something 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 resemblance.
26. Secondary Qualities twofold; first, immediately perceivable;
secondly, mediately perceivable.
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