. I confess it seems so.

     . Consequently, the principles themselves are false,
since you have granted that no true principle leads to an
absurdity.

     . But, after all, can anything be more absurd than to
say, <there is no heat in the fire>?

     . To make the point still clearer; tell me whether, in
two cases exactly alike, we ought not to make the same judgment?

     .. We ought.

     . When a pin pricks your finger, doth it not rend and
divide the fibres of your flesh?

     . It doth.

     . And when a coal burns your finger, doth it any more?

     . It doth not.

     . Since, therefore, you neither judge the sensation
itself occasioned by the pin, nor anything like it to be in the
pin; you should not, conformably to what you have now granted,
judge the sensation occasioned by the fire, or anything like it,
to be in the fire.

     . Well, since it must be so, I am content to yield this
point, and acknowledge that heat and cold are only sensations
existing in our minds. But there still remain qualities enough to
secure the reality of external things.

     . But what will you say, Hylas, if it shall appear
that the case is the same with regard to all other sensible
qualities, and that they can no more be supposed to exist without
the mind, than heat and cold?

     . Then indeed you will have done something to the
purpose; but that is what I despair of seeing proved.

     . Let us examine them in order. What think you of
, do they exist without the mind, or no?

     . Can any man in his senses doubt whether sugar is
sweet, or wormwood bitter?

     . Inform me, Hylas. Is a sweet taste a particular kind
of pleasure or pleasant sensation, or is it not? {180}

     . It is.

     . And is not bitterness some kind of uneasiness or
pain?

     . I grant it.

     . If therefore sugar and wormwood are unthinking
corporeal substances existing without the mind, how can sweetness
and bitterness, that is, Pleasure and pain, agree to them?

     . Hold, Philonous, I now see what it was delude time.
You asked whether heat and cold, sweetness at were not particular
sorts of pleasure and pain; to which simply, that they were.
Whereas I should have thus distinguished: those qualities, as
perceived by us, are pleasures or pair existing in the external
objects. We must not therefore conclude absolutely, that there is
no heat in the fire, or sweetness in the sugar, but only that
heat or sweetness, as perceived by us, are not in the fire or
sugar. What say you to this?

     . I say it is nothing to the purpose. Our discourse
proceeded altogether concerning sensible things, which you
defined to be, <the things we immediately perceive by our
senses>. Whatever other qualities, therefore, you speak of as
distinct from these, I know nothing of them, neither do they at
all belong to the point in dispute. You may, indeed, pretend to
have discovered certain qualities which you do not perceive, and
assert those insensible qualities exist in fire and sugar. But
what use can be made of this to your present purpose, I am at a
loss to conceive. Tell me then once more, do you acknowledge that
heat and cold, sweetness and bitterness (meaning those qualities
which are perceived by the senses), do not exist without the
mind?

     . I see it is to no purpose to hold out, so I give up
the cause as to those mentioned qualities. Though I profess it
sounds oddly, to say that sugar is not sweet.

     . But, for your farther satisfaction, take this along
with you: that which at other times seems sweet, shall, to a
distempered palate, appear bitter. And, nothing can be plainer
than that divers persons perceive different tastes in the same
food; since that which one man delights in, another abhors. And
how could this be, if the taste was something really inherent in
the food?

     . I acknowledge I know not how.