Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)Balmes, Jaime Luciano
Philosophy
Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Balmes, Jaime Luciano
Philosophy, Spanish
10. When we perceive an impression we never call it a substance, if
we refer it to an object, or consider it as objective: for the object
is not, of itself alone, capable of connecting various sensations.
We receive the sensations of red, and not only ordinary people, but
even philosophers, when not philosophizing, make the color objective,
and consider the red, not as a simple sensation, but as an external
quality. No one would call this quality by itself a substance; for
it is not capable, of itself alone, of connecting other impressions
or qualities. If there is a change of color the red disappears,
and the new impression is connected in the order of time with the
sensation of the red, but does not reside in it. If there is a change
of form, although the red continues, we do not conceive this color as
the necessary link between the two forms, because we know that the
continuance of the red is indifferent to the variety of form, which may
be changed with or without the continuance of this color.
As in general we have experienced that no sensation is necessarily
connected with another, and that among sensations connected at a common
point, some disappear without the rest disappearing, we infer that
none of them is a necessary link; and therefore, although we make them
objective, we do not give them the character of a substance, of any
thing remaining identical through changes, of which it is, as it were,
the recipient.
11. There is a property in bodies which is necessary to all sensations,
or at least, to the two principal sensations of sight and touch. This
property is extension, which, whether considered subjectively or
objectively, we regard as a recipient of all sensations. We neither see
nor imagine the white or black; we neither touch nor imagine the hard
or the soft, the warm or the cold, without the extension in which the
whiteness or blackness, the hardness or softness, the warmth or the
cold reside. Thus extension might perhaps merit the honor of substance,
if it were not subject to another condition, which deprives it of this
title.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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