unthinking substance. I answer, an idea can be like nothing but an
idea; a colour or figure can be like nothing but another colour or
figure. If we look but never so little into our thoughts, we shall
find it impossible for us to conceive a likeness except only between
our ideas. Again, I ask whether those supposed originals or external
things, of which our ideas are the pictures or representations, be
themselves perceivable or no? If they are, then they are ideas and
we have gained our point; but if you say they are not, I appeal to any
one whether it be sense to assert a colour is like something which
is invisible; hard or soft, like something which is intangible; and so
of the rest.

  9. Some there are who make a distinction betwixt primary and
secondary qualities. By the former they mean extension, figure,
motion, rest, solidity or impenetrability, and number; by the latter
they denote all other sensible qualities, as colours, sounds,
tastes, and so forth. The ideas we have of these they acknowledge
not to be the resemblances of anything existing without the mind, or
unperceived, but they will have our ideas of the primary qualities
to be patterns or images of things which exist without the mind, in an
unthinking substance which they call Matter. By Matter, therefore,
we are to understand an inert, senseless substance, in which
extension, figure, and motion do actually subsist. But it is evident
from what we have already shown, that extension, figure, and motion
are only ideas existing in the mind, and that an idea can be like
nothing but another idea, and that consequently neither they nor their
archetypes can exist in an unperceiving substance. Hence, it is
plain that that the very notion of what is called Matter or
corporeal substance, involves a contradiction in it.

  10. They who assert that figure, motion, and the rest of the primary
or original qualities do exist without the mind in unthinking
substances, do at the same time acknowledge that colours, sounds, heat
cold, and suchlike secondary qualities, do not- which they tell us are
sensations existing in the mind alone, that depend on and are
occasioned by the different size, texture, and motion of the minute
particles of matter. This they take for an undoubted truth, which they
can demonstrate beyond all exception. Now, if it be certain that those
original qualities are inseparably united with the other sensible
qualities, and not, even in thought, capable of being abstracted
from them, it plainly follows that they exist only in the mind. But
I desire any one to reflect and try whether he can, by any abstraction
of thought, conceive the extension and motion of a body without all
other sensible qualities. For my own part, I see evidently that it
is not in my power to frame an idea of a body extended and moving, but
I must withal give it some colour or other sensible quality which is
acknowledged to exist only in the mind. In short, extension, figure,
and motion, abstracted from all other qualities, are inconceivable.
Where therefore the other sensible qualities are, there must these
be also, to wit, in the mind and nowhere else.

  11. Again, great and small, swift and slow, are allowed to exist
nowhere without the mind, being entirely relative, and changing as the
frame or position of the organs of sense varies. The extension
therefore which exists without the mind is neither great nor small,
the motion neither swift nor slow, that is, they are nothing at all.
But, say you, they are extension in general, and motion in general:
thus we see how much the tenet of extended movable substances existing
without the mind depends on the strange doctrine of abstract ideas.
And here I cannot but remark how nearly the vague and indeterminate
description of Matter or corporeal substance, which the modern
philosophers are run into by their own principles, resembles that
antiquated and so much ridiculed notion of materia prima, to be met
with in Aristotle and his followers. Without extension solidity cannot
be conceived; since therefore it has been shewn that extension
exists not in an unthinking substance, the same must also be true of
solidity.

  12. That number is entirely the creature of the mind, even though
the other qualities be allowed to exist without, will be evident to
whoever considers that the same thing bears a different denomination
of number as the mind views it with different respects. Thus, the same
extension is one, or three, or thirty-six, according as the mind
considers it with reference to a yard, a foot, or an inch. Number is
so visibly relative, and dependent on men's understanding, that it
is strange to think how any one should give it an absolute existence
without the mind. We say one book, one page, one line, etc.; all these
are equally units, though some contain several of the others. And in
each instance, it is plain, the unit relates to some particular
combination of ideas arbitrarily put together by the mind.

  13. Unity I know some will have to be a simple or uncompounded idea,
accompanying all other ideas into the mind. That I have any such
idea answering the word unity I do not find; and if I had, methinks
I could not miss finding it: on the contrary, it should be the most
familiar to my understanding, since it is said to accompany all
other ideas, and to be perceived by all the ways of sensation and
reflexion. To say no more, it is an abstract idea.

  14. I shall farther add, that, after the same manner as modern
philosophers prove certain sensible qualities to have no existence
in Matter, or without the mind, the same thing may be likewise
proved of all other sensible qualities whatsoever. Thus, for instance,
it is said that heat and cold are affections only of the mind, and not
at all patterns of real beings, existing in the corporeal substances
which excite them, for that the same body which appears cold to one
hand seems warm to another. Now, why may we not as well argue that
figure and extension are not patterns or resemblances of qualities
existing in Matter, because to the same eye at different stations,
or eyes of a different texture at the same station, they appear