Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists | Page 4

perceive one simple uniform sensation, or two distinct sensations?
HYL. But one simple sensation.
PHIL. Is not the heat immediately perceived?
HYL. It is.
PHIL. And the pain?
HYL. True.
PHIL. Seeing therefore they are both immediately perceived at the same time, and the fire affects you only with one simple or uncompounded idea, it follows that this same simple idea is both the intense heat immediately perceived, and the pain; and, consequently, that the intense heat immediately perceived is nothing distinct from a particular sort of pain.
HYL. It seems so.
PHIL. Again, try in your thoughts, Hylas, if you can conceive a vehement sensation to be without pain or pleasure.
HYL. I cannot.
PHIL. Or can you frame to yourself an idea of sensible pain or pleasure in general, abstracted from every particular idea of heat, cold, tastes, smells? &c.
HYL. I do not find that I can.
PHIL. Doth it not therefore follow, that sensible pain is nothing distinct from those sensations or ideas, in an intense degree?
HYL. It is undeniable; and, to speak the truth, I begin to suspect a very great heat cannot exist but in a mind perceiving it.
PHIL. What! are you then in that sceptical state of suspense, between affirming and denying?
HYL. I think I may be positive in the point. A very violent and painful heat cannot exist without the mind.
PHIL. It hath not therefore according to you, any REAL being?
HYL. I own it.
PHIL. Is it therefore certain, that there is no body in nature really hot?
HYL. I have not denied there is any real heat in bodies. I only say, there is no such thing as an intense real heat.
PHIL. But, did you not say before that all degrees of heat were equally real; or, if there was any difference, that the greater were more undoubtedly real than the lesser?
HYL. True: but it was because I did not then consider the ground there is for distinguishing between them, which I now plainly see. And it is this: because intense heat is nothing else but a particular kind of painful sensation; and pain cannot exist but in a perceiving being; it follows that no intense heat can really exist in an unperceiving corporeal substance. But this is no reason why we should deny heat in an inferior degree to exist in such a substance.
PHIL. But how shall we be able to discern those degrees of heat which exist only in the mind from those which exist without it?
HYL. That is no difficult matter. You know the least pain cannot exist unperceived; whatever, therefore, degree of heat is a pain exists only in the mind. But, as for all other degrees of heat, nothing obliges us to think the same of them.
PHIL. I think you granted before that no unperceiving being was capable of pleasure, any more than of pain.
HYL. I did.
PHIL. And is not warmth, or a more gentle degree of heat than what causes uneasiness, a pleasure?
HYL. What then?
PHIL. Consequently, it cannot exist without the mind in an unperceiving substance, or body.
HYL. So it seems.
PHIL. Since, therefore, as well those degrees of heat that are not painful, as those that are, can exist only in a thinking substance; may we not conclude that external bodies are absolutely incapable of any degree of heat whatsoever?
HYL. On second thoughts, I do not think it so evident that warmth is a pleasure as that a great degree of heat is a pain.
PHIL. I do not pretend that warmth is as great a pleasure as heat is a pain. But, if you grant it to be even a small pleasure, it serves to make good my conclusion.
HYL. I could rather call it an INDOLENCE. It seems to be nothing more than a privation of both pain and pleasure. And that such a quality or state as this may agree to an unthinking substance, I hope you will not deny.
PHIL. If you are resolved to maintain that warmth, or a gentle degree of heat, is no pleasure, I know not how to convince you otherwise than by appealing to your own sense. But what think you of cold?
HYL. The same that I do of heat. An intense degree of cold is a pain; for to feel a very great cold, is to perceive a great uneasiness: it cannot therefore exist without the mind; but a lesser degree of cold may, as well as a lesser degree of heat.
PHIL. Those bodies, therefore, upon whose application to our own, we perceive a moderate degree of heat, must be concluded to have a moderate degree of heat or warmth in them; and those, upon whose application we feel a like degree of cold, must be thought to have cold in them.
HYL. They must.
PHIL. Can any doctrine be true that necessarily leads a man into an absurdity?
HYL. Without doubt it cannot.
PHIL. Is