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 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 though 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. To conclude, beside those before-mentioned primary qualities in bodies, viz., bulk, figure, extension, number, and motion of their solid parts, all the rest whereby we take notice of bodies, and distinguish them one from another, are nothing else but several powers in them depending on those primary qualities, whereby they

are fitted, either by immediately operating on our bodies, to produce several different ideas in us, or else, by operating on other bodies, so to change their primary qualities as to render them capable of producing ideas in us different from what before they did. The former of these, I think, may be called secondary qualities, immediately perceivable; the latter, secondary qualities, mediately perceivable.

CHAPTER IX.

OF PERCEPTION.

1. Perception the first simple Idea of Reflection.-PERCEPTION, as it is the first faculty of the mind exercised about her ideas, so it is the first and simplest idea we have from reflec-✔ tion, and is by some called thinking in general: though thinking, in the propriety of the English tongue, signifies that sort of operation in the mind about its ideas, wherein the mind is active; where it, with some degree of voluntary attention, considers anything. For in bare naked perception, the mind is, for the most part, only passive; and what it perceives, it cannot avoid perceiving.

2. Is only when the Mind receives the Impression.—What perception is, every one will know better by reflecting on what he does himself, what he sees, hears, feels, &c., or thinks, than by any discourse of mine. Whoever reflects on what passes in his own mind cannot miss it; and if he does not reflect, all the words in the world cannot make him have any notion of it.

3. This is certain, that whatever alterations are made in the body, if they reach not the mind, whatever impressions are made on the outward parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no perception. Fire may burn our bodies with no other effect than it does a billet, unless the motion be continued to the brain, and there the sense of heat, or idea of pain, be produced in the mind, wherein consists actual perception.

4. How often may a man observe in himself, that whilst his mind is intently employed in the contemplation of some objects, and curiously surveying some ideas that are there, it takes no notice of impressions of sounding bodies made upon

the organ of hearing, with the same alteration that uses to be for the producing the idea of sound!* A sufficient impulse there may be on the organ; but if not reaching the observation of the mind, there follows no perception: and though the motion that uses to produce the idea of sound be made in the ear, yet no sound is heard. Want of sensation, in this case, is not through any defect in the organ, or that the man's ears are less affected than at other times when he does hear: but that which uses to produce the idea, though conveyed in by the usual organ, not being taken notice of in the understanding, and so imprinting no idea in the mind, there follows no sensation. So that wherever there is sense or perception, there some idea is actually produced, and present, in the understanding.

5. Children, though they have Ideas in the Womb, have none innate. Therefore I doubt not but children, by the exercise of their senses about objects that affect them in the womb, receive some few ideas before they are born, as the unavoidable effects either of the bodies that environ them, or else of those wants or diseases they suffer; amongst which (if one may conjecture concerning things not very capable of examination) I think the ideas of hunger and warmth are two, which probably are some of the first that children have, and which they scarce ever part with again.

6. But though it be reasonable to imagine that children receive some ideas before they come into the world, yet those simple ideas are far from those innate principles which some contend for, and we, above, have rejected. These, here mentioned, being the effects of sensation, are only from some affections of the body, which happen to them there, and so depend on something exterior to the mind; no otherwise differing in their manner of production from other ideas

* So passion, as Shakspeare has shown in Lear, deprives us of the power of perceiving outward objects.

"The tempest in my mind

Doth from my senses take all feeling else,

Save what beats there."

Again, in profound meditation, amid the stillness of a summer's night, we may observe all things,

"Sea, and hill, and wood,

With all the numberless goings on of life,
Inaudible as dreams."

COLERIDGE.-ED.

derived from sense, but only in the precedency of time; whereas those innate principles are supposed to be quite of another nature, not coming into the mind by any accidental alterations in, or operations on the body; but, as it were, original characters impressed upon it, in the very first moment of its being and constitution.

7. Which Ideas first, is not evident.-As there are some ideas which we may reasonably suppose may be introduced into the minds of children in the womb, subservient to the necessities of their life and being there, so, after they are born, those ideas are the earliest imprinted which happen to be the sensible qualities which first occur to them, amongst which light is not the least considerable, nor of the weakest efficacy. And how covetous the mind is to be furnished with all such ideas as have no pain accompanying them, may be a little guessed by what is observable in children new-born; who always turn their eyes to that part from whence the light comes, lay them how you please. But the ideas that are most familiar at first being various, according to the divers circumstances of children's first entertainment in the world, the order wherein the several ideas come at first into the mind is very various and uncertain also, neither is it much material to know it.

8. Ideas of Sensation often changed by the Judgment.-We are further 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, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted on our mind is of a flat circle variously shadowed, with several degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes.* But we have 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 is truly variety of shadow or colour, collecting the figure, it makes it pass for a mark of figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex * See in Condillac's Essays, "Sur l'Origine de la Connaissance Humaine," the same idea further developed.-ED.

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 ingenious 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 and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere. Suppose, then, the cube and sphere placed on a table, and the blind man be made to see: quære, whether by his sight, before he touched 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 affects his touch, yet he has not yet obtained 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

*This is a description of that part of experience which artists denominate the education of the eye. The man who has gone through such an education, looks on nature, and the whole assemblage of objects around him, with feelings very different from those which arise in the minds of ordinary men. He discovers grandeur and beauty in things of no significance to others, and derives delight from what is to them a blank.-ED.

+ The letter of Molineux, in which the above occurs, is found complete in Locke's works, vol. iii. p. 512. "I will conclude my tedious lines," says he, "with a grave problem, that, upon discourse with several concerning your book and notions, I have proposed to divers very ingenious men, and could hardly ever meet with one that at first dash would give me the answer to it which I think true, till by hearing my reasons they were convinced." Having stated his jocose problem in the words given by Locke, he adds; "Perhaps you may find some place in your essay wherein you may not think it amiss to say something of this problem.' His friend accordingly found a place for it, and thus secured immortality to the name of its proposer. After all, however, and admitting the extreme fallibility of the senses, I still think the result would be the direct contrary of what both Locke and Molineux suppose, for the idea of the globe having once obtained a footing in the mind, through the instrumentality of one sense, could not fail to be recognised when subjected to the examination of another. And this I find to be the conclusion at