An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 3 and 4
John Locke · en
As there is no discoverable connexion between fixedness and the colour,
weight, and other simple ideas of that nominal essence of gold; so,
if we make our complex idea of gold, a body yellow, fusable, ductile,
weighty, and fixed, we shall be at the same uncertainty concerning
solubility in AQUA REGIA, and for the same reason. Since we can never,
from consideration of the ideas themselves, with certainty affirm or
deny of a body whose complex idea is made up of yellow, very weighty,
ductile, fusible, and fixed, that it is soluble in AQUA REGIA: and so
on of the rest of its qualities. I would gladly meet with one general
affirmation concerning any will, no doubt, be presently objected, Is not
this an universal proposition, ALL GOLD IS MALLEABLE? To which I answer,
It is a very complex idea the word gold stands for. But then here is
nothing affirmed of gold, but that that sound stands for an idea in
which malleableness is contained: and such a sort of truth and certainty
as this it is, to say a centaur is four-footed. But if malleableness make
not a part of the specific essence the name of gold stands for, it is
plain, ALL GOLD IS MALLEABLE, is not a certain proposition. Because,
let the complex idea of gold be made up of whichsoever of its other
qualities you please, malleableness will not appear to depend on that
complex idea, nor follow from any simple one contained in it: the
connexion that malleableness has (if it has any) with those other
qualities being only by the intervention of the real constitution of its
insensible parts; which, since we know not, it is impossible we should
perceive that connexion, unless we could discover that which ties them
together.
10. As far as any such Co-existence can be known, so far Universal
Propositions maybe certain. But this will go but a little way.