CHAP. VI. 



Of Sensible Qualities* 



1, i HERE is no part of philosophy which hay 

 made less progress among the vulgar, than that which 

 treating of sensible qualities, dismisses them entirely 

 from body, to make them reside in the mind. The 

 most eminent philosophers of antiquity have acknow- 

 ledged this truth, it sprung naturally from their prin- 

 ciples, and they deduce the same consequences from 

 It. Democrilus, Socrates, Aristippus, Plato, Epi- 

 curus, and Lucretius, have dearly affirmed, that 

 cold and heat, odours and colours, were no other 

 than sensations, excited in our minds, by the different 

 operations of the bodies surrounding us, and acting 

 on our senses. And it is easy to shew, that Aris- 

 totle himself was of this opinion, that sensible qua- 

 lities exist in the mind ; though by the obscure 

 manner in which he opens himself, he hath given 

 occasion to believe that he thought otherwise. There 

 are only the schoolmen, \vho have positively affirmed, 

 that sensible qualities exist in bodies as in minds; 

 that there is in luminous bodies, for example, the 

 very same thing that is in us when we view light. 

 And as the philosophy of the schools had for some 

 ages taken possession of men's mind, when Descartes, 

 and after him Mallebranche, arose in opposition to 

 the common prejudices, taking pains to draw the 

 herd of philosophers out of the gross errors, wherein 

 they found them involved ; it was not perceived, that 



