dity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number. Secondary qualities are nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities, (that is, by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insensible parts) as, colours, sounds, tastes, &c. A third sort might be added, which are allowed to be barely powers, though they are as much real qualities in the subject as those which I call, for distinction, Secondary Qualities for the power of fire to produce a new colour or consistency in wax by its primary qualities is as much a quality in fire, as the power it has to produce in me a new idea of warmth or bung, which I felt not before by the same primary qualities, viz. the bulk, texture, and motion of its insensible parts. The primary and secondary qualities of bodies produce ideas in us by impulse: for if external objects be not united to our minds, some motion must be continued, by our nerves or some parts of our bodies, to the brains or seat of sensation, and by the operation of insensible particles on the senses produce Ideas. It is not more impossible to conceive that the ideas of a blue colour and a sweet smell in a violet should be annexed to certain motions of insensible particles of matter, (with which they have no similitude,) than that the idea of pain should be annexed to the motion of a piece of steel dividing our flesh, (with which that idea has no resemblance.)

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The Ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them; and their patterns really exist in the bodies themselves: Ideas of secondary qualities are not resemblances of them; and nothing like our Ideas exists in the bodies themselves. The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of fire, or snow, are really in them whether perceived or not; but light, heat, whiteness, and coldness, are not really in them, but depend on our sensations. The same water may produce the Idea of cold by one hand, and of heat by the other, which were impossible if those ideas were in the water: we may conceive this if we imagine the warmth in our hands to be a certain sort and degree of motion in the minute particles of our nerves, or animal spirits; but figure never produces the idea of square by one hand, and of round by the other.

1st. The bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or rest of the solid parts of bodies, I call real, original, or primary qualities.

2d. The powers in bodies to produce immediately in us the ideas of several colours, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings, by reason of their primary qualities, I call secondary, imputed, or sensible qualities; and to distinguish them from the third sort, secondary qualities immediately perceivable.

3d. The powers in bodies, by their primary qualities, to operate on other bodies so as to change their

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primary qualities, and make them produce ideas in us different from what they did before, I call, secondary qualities mediately perceivable.

Ideas of the third sort are not resemblances: for we plainly discover that the quality produced has commonly no resemblance with any thing in the thing producing it; thus we never believe the change of colour produced in a fair face by the sun to be the perception or resemblance of any thing in the sun :— or, our senses being able to discover the likeness or unlikeness of sensible qualities in two different external objects, we never fancy any sensible quality produced in a subject to be a quality communicated, but only an effect of bare power, unless we find such a sensensible quality in the subject producing it. But our senses not discovering any unlikeness between our Ideas, and the qualities of objects producing them, we are apt to imagine that our ideas are resemblances of something in the objects, and not the effects of certain powers in their primary qualities.

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CHAP. IX.

OF PERCEPTION.

PERCEPTION is the first faculty of the mind exercised about our Ideas; it is the first and simplest ide a we have from reflection;--and is by some called

Thinking in general. Thinking is more properly an active operation of the mind, when it gives a voluntary attention to its ideas; Perception a passive state of the mind, when it perceives what it cannot avoid. There is only Perception, when the mind receives an impression by the senses, or when it thinks. Impressions may be made on the organs without producing perceptions, owing to want of observation in the mind. Children probably get the ideas of hunger and warmth in the womb. Light is probably one of the 'first ideas that children get, and they always turn their eyes towards it.

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"We are farther to consider concerning Perception, that the Ideas we receive by sensation are often in grown people altered by the judgment, without our taking notice of it. When we set before our eyes a round globe, of any uniform colour, v. g Gold, Alabaster, or Jet, 'tis certain, that the Idea, thereby imprinted in our mind, is of a flat circle, variously shadow'd, with several degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes. But we having by use 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 sensible figures of Bodies; the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the appearances into their causes: so that from that, which truly is variety of shadow or co

lour, collecting the figure, it makes it pass 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 variously coloured; as is evident in painting. To which purpose, I shall here insert a Problem of that very ingenius and studious promoter of real knowledge, the learned and worthy Mr. Molineux, which he was pleased to send me in a letter some months since ; and it is this: Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a Cube and a Sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one und t'other, which is the Cube, which the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere placed on a table, and the blind man to be made to see: Quære, Whether by his sight, before he touch'd them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which is the Globe, which the Cube. To which the acute and judicious proposer answers, not. For though he has obtained the experience of how a Globe, how a Cube effects his touch; yet he has not yet attained the experience, that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so: or that a protuberant angle in the Cube, that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye, as it does in the Cube. I agree with this thinking gentleman, whom I am proud to call my friend, in-his answer to this his Problem; and