Locke's theory of perception



256           Public Lectures

in the mind are like those in nature. These are called the
“primary” qualities, because they resemble what they stand
for.

But our sensations or sensory ideas have other properties
besides the primary. For example, anything clearly seen not
only has the primary quality shape, but also color. Anything
touched not only suggests the primary quality solidity, but
also warmth or cold. In short, there seems to be another
class of properties which do not
resemble anything in bodies
in the same straight-forward way that the primary qualities
do. A sensed red is not like any property of a body. Never-
theless Locke calls them qualities of bodies in a rather queer
sense. White, for example, may properly be called a prop-
erty of our marble, in the sense that the particular order and
motions of the atoms of the marble are such as to produce
in the mind the sensation of white when particles of light
are reflected from the marble to the eye. We see, then, how
indirectly the white qualifies the marble—not at all in the
same direct way that say the shape of the marble qualifies it.
Consequently, Locke calls it a “secondary” quality, and
classes under this head all such as have real being only in
the mind. Sounds, odors, tastes, pains, and sensations of
temperature all share along with colors the same mind-bound
existence. Except in the presence of some mind, there is noth-
ing warm or sweet or colorful in the universe. And even in
the presence of some mind, nothing in the universe is warm
or sweet or colorful in the same simple way in which it is
solid or extended in space?

We have seen how the escape out of our minds into nature
is accomplished by means of a relation of resemblance be-
tween certain qualities of the contents of our minds and the

* Hence Cousin remarks that Locke inclines toward materialism, despite
the admission of immaterial substance or mind.
Philosophie de Locke, p. 361.



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