qualities inhering in
it.

PHIL. How then can a great heat exist in it, since you own it cannot in
a material substance? I desire you would clear this point.

HYL. Hold, Philonous, I fear I was out in yielding intense heat to be a
pain. It should seem rather, that pain is something distinct from heat,
and the consequence or effect of it.

PHIL. Upon putting your hand near the fire, do you perceive one simple
uniform sensation, or two distinct sensations?

HYL. But one simple sensation.

PHIL. Is not the heat immediately perceived?

HYL. It is.

PHIL. And the pain?

HYL. True.

PHIL. Seeing therefore they are both immediately perceived at the same
time, and the fire affects you only with one simple or uncompounded idea,
it follows that this same simple idea is both the intense heat
immediately perceived, and the pain; and, consequently, that the intense
heat immediately perceived is nothing distinct from a particular sort of
pain.

HYL. It seems so.

PHIL. Again, try in your thoughts, Hylas, if you can conceive a
vehement sensation to be without pain or pleasure.

HYL. I cannot.

PHIL. Or can you frame to yourself an idea of sensible pain or pleasure
in general, abstracted from every particular idea of heat, cold, tastes,
smells? &c.

HYL. I do not find that I can.

PHIL. Doth it not therefore follow, that sensible pain is nothing
distinct from those sensations or ideas, in an intense degree?

HYL. It is undeniable; and, to speak the truth, I begin to suspect a
very great heat cannot exist but in a mind perceiving it.

PHIL. What! are you then in that sceptical state of suspense, between
affirming and denying?

HYL. I think I may be positive in the point. A very violent and painful
heat cannot exist without the mind.

PHIL. It hath not therefore according to you, any REAL being?

HYL. I own it.

PHIL. Is it therefore certain, that there is no body in nature really
hot?

HYL. I have not denied there is any real heat in bodies. I only say,
there is no such thing as an intense real heat.

PHIL. But, did you not say before that all degrees of heat were equally
real; or, if there was any difference, that the greater were more
undoubtedly real than the lesser?

HYL. True: but it was because I did not then consider the ground there
is for distinguishing between them, which I now plainly see. And it is
this: because intense heat is nothing else but a particular kind of
p