| The latter are neither unavoidable to mankind, nor necessary, or so much as useful in the conduct of life; but on the contrary are observed only to take place in weak minds, and being opposite to the other principles of custom and reasoning, may easily be subverted by a due contrast and opposition. |
| For this reason the former are received by philosophy, and the latter rejected. |
| One who concludes somebody to be near him, when he hears an articulate voice in the dark, reasons justly and naturally; though that conclusion be derived from nothing but custom, which infixes and inlivens the idea of a human creature, on account of his usual conjunction with the present impression. |
| But one, who is tormented he knows not why, with the apprehension of spectres in the dark, may, perhaps, be said to reason, and to reason naturally too: But then it must be in the same sense, that a malady is said to be natural; as arising from natural causes, though it be contrary to health, the most agreeable and most natural situation of man. |
| The opinions of the antient philosophers, their fictions of substance and accident, and their reasonings concerning substantial forms and occult qualities, are like the spectres in the dark, and are derived from principles, which, however common, are neither universal nor unavoidable in human nature. |
| The modern philosophy pretends to be entirely free from this defect, and to arise only from the solid, permanent, and consistent principles of the imagination. |
| Upon what grounds this pretension is founded must now be the subject of our enquiry. |
| The fundamental principle of that philosophy is the opinion concerning colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat and cold; which it asserts to be nothing but impressions in the mind, derived from the operation of external objects, and without any resemblance to the qualities of the objects. |
| Upon examination, I find only one of the reasons commonly produced for this opinion to be satisfactory, viz. |
| that derived from the variations of those impressions, even while the external object, to all appearance, continues the same. |
| These variations depend upon several circumstances. |
| Upon the different situations of our health: A man in a malady feels a disagreeable taste in meats, which before pleased him the most. |
| Upon the different complexions and constitutions of men That seems bitter to one, which is sweet to another. |
| Upon the difference of their external situation and position: Colours reflected from the clouds change according to the distance of the clouds, and according to the angle they make with the eye and luminous body. |
| Fire. also communicates the sensation of pleasure at one distance, and that of pain at another. |
| Instances of this kind are very numerous and frequent. |
| The conclusion drawn from them, is likewise as satisfactory as can possibly be imagined. |
| It is certain, that when different impressions of the same sense arise from any object, every one of these impressions has not a resembling quality existent in the object. |
| For as the same object cannot, at the same time, be endowed with different qualities of the same sense, and as the same quality cannot resemble impressions entirely different; it evidently follows, that many of our impressions have no external model or archetype. |
| Now from like effects we presume like causes. |
| Many of the impressions of colour, sound, &c. |