contributed, I have strenuously laboured
to state all its points as convincingly as the obligations of brevity
would permit, I am not myself by any means convinced by it. On the
contrary, although to say so may seem to imply a considerable overstock
of modest assurance, still I do say that whatever portion of it is
sound is irrelevant, and that whatever portion is relevant is not
sound. So much of it as relates to the nature of the qualities of
matter, is, however interesting or otherwise important, very little, if
at all, to the purpose. No doubt if I prick my finger with a needle,
or--to take in preference an illustration employed by Locke--if my
fingers ache in consequence of my handling snow, it would be supremely
ridiculous to talk of the pain I feel being in the snow; yet not a whit
more ridiculous than to call the snow itself white or cold, if, by so
speaking, I mean that anything in the slightest degree resembling my
sensation of either snowy whiteness or snowy coldness resides in the
snow itself. And as of coldness and whiteness, so of all the other
so-styled secondary qualities. If I smell a rose, or listen to a piano,
the rose or the piano is quite insensible to the scent or sounds by
which my sense is ravished. And of primary qualities, also, precisely
the same thing may with equal confidence be alleged. A stone which I
perceive to be large, round, hard, and either rotating or motionless,
has no more perception of its own extension, figure, solidity, motion,
or rest than a snowball has of its colour or temperature. But all this,
though perfectly true, has nothing to do with the question, which is not
_what_ qualities of matter are, but _where_ they are, and whether they
can exist anywhere but in mind; and this question, I submit, is
distinctly begged by those who assume, as is done throughout the
reasoning under examination, that our _sensations_ with regard to
material objects, and the _qualities_ of those objects, are synonymous
and convertible terms. Incontestably, sensations are affections of the
mind which neither have nor can have any existence outside the mind. If,
then, the qualities of objects are identical with the sensations which
arise in the mind concerning those objects, why, of course, the
qualities likewise can exist nowhere but in the mind. On narrowly
scrutinising, however, the supposed identity, we shall find that it
involves somewhat reckless confusion of diametrical opposites. When I
loo