Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists | Page 5

it not an absurdity to think that the same thing should be at the same time both cold and warm?
HYL. It is.
PHIL. Suppose now one of your hands hot, and the other cold, and that they are both at once put into the same vessel of water, in an intermediate state; will not the water seem cold to one hand, and warm to the other?
HYL. It will.
PHIL. Ought we not therefore, by your principles, to conclude it is really both cold and warm at the same time, that is, according to your own concession, to believe an absurdity?
HYL. I confess it seems so.
PHIL. Consequently, the principles themselves are false, since you have granted that no true principle leads to an absurdity.
HYL. But, after all, can anything be more absurd than to say, THERE IS NO HEAT IN THE FIRE?
PHIL. To make the point still clearer; tell me whether, in two cases exactly alike, we ought not to make the same judgment?
HYL. We ought.
PHIL. When a pin pricks your finger, doth it not rend and divide the fibres of your flesh?
HYL. It doth.
PHIL. And when a coal burns your finger, doth it any more?
HYL. It doth not.
PHIL. 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.
HYL. 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.
PHIL. 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?
HYL. Then indeed you will have done something to the purpose; but that is what I despair of seeing proved.
PHIL. Let us examine them in order. What think you of TASTES, do they exist without the mind, or no?
HYL. Can any man in his senses doubt whether sugar is sweet, or wormwood bitter?
PHIL. Inform me, Hylas. Is a sweet taste a particular kind of pleasure or pleasant sensation, or is it not?
HYL. It is.
PHIL. And is not bitterness some kind of uneasiness or pain?
HYL. I grant it.
PHIL. 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?
HYL. 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?
PHIL. 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?
HYL. 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.
PHIL. 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?
HYL. I acknowledge I know not how.
PHIL. In the next place, ODOURS are to be considered. And, with regard to these, I would fain know whether what hath been said of tastes doth not exactly agree to them? Are they not so many pleasing or displeasing sensations?
HYL.