The Works of George Berkeley Part 46

_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(793), 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 deluded me all this time.

You asked whether heat and cold, sweetness and bitterness, were not particular sorts of pleasure and pain; to which I answered simply, that they were. Whereas I should have thus distinguished:-those qualities, as perceived by us, are pleasures or pains; but not as 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 a.s.sert 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._ They are.

_Phil._ Can you then conceive it possible that they should exist in an unperceiving thing?

_Hyl._ I cannot.

_Phil._ Or, can you imagine that filth and ordure affect those brute animals that feed on them out of choice, with the same smells which we perceive in them?

_Hyl._ By no means.

_Phil._ May we not therefore conclude of smells, as of the other forementioned qualities, that they cannot exist in any but a perceiving substance or mind?

_Hyl._ I think so.

_Phil._ Then as to _sounds_, what must we think of them: are they accidents really inherent in external bodies, or not?

_Hyl._ That they inhere not in the sonorous bodies is plain from hence: because a bell struck in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump sends forth no sound. The air, therefore, must be thought the subject of sound.

_Phil._ What reason is there for that, Hylas?

_Hyl._ Because, when any motion is raised in the air, we perceive a sound greater or lesser, according to the air's motion; but without some motion in the air, we never hear any sound at all.

_Phil._ And granting that we never hear a sound but when some motion is produced in the air, yet I do not see how you can infer from thence, that the sound itself is in the air.

_Hyl._ It is this very motion in the external air that produces in the mind the sensation of _sound_. For, striking on the drum of the ear, it causeth a vibration, which by the auditory nerves being communicated to the brain, the soul is thereupon affected with the sensation called _sound_.

_Phil._ What! is sound then a sensation?

_Hyl._ I tell you, as perceived by us, it is a particular sensation in the mind.

_Phil._ And can any sensation exist without the mind?

_Hyl._ No, certainly.

_Phil._ How then can sound, being a sensation, exist in the air, if by the _air_ you mean a senseless substance existing without the mind?

_Hyl._ You must distinguish, Philonous, between sound as it is perceived by us, and as it is in itself; or (which is the same thing) between the sound we immediately perceive, and that which exists without us. The former, indeed, is a particular kind of sensation, but the latter is merely a vibrative or undulatory motion in the air.

_Phil._ I thought I had already obviated that distinction, by the answer I gave when you were applying it in a like case before. But, to say no more of that, are you sure then that sound is really nothing but motion?

_Hyl._ I am.

_Phil._ Whatever therefore agrees to real sound, may with truth be attributed to motion?

_Hyl._ It may.

_Phil._ It is then good sense to speak of _motion_ as of a thing that is _loud, sweet, acute, or grave_.

_Hyl._ I see you are resolved not to understand me. Is it not evident those accidents or modes belong only to sensible sound, or _sound_ in the common acceptation of the word, but not to _sound_ in the real and philosophic sense; which, as I just now told you, is nothing but a certain motion of the air?

_Phil._ It seems then there are two sorts of sound-the one vulgar, or that which is heard, the other philosophical and real?

_Hyl._ Even so.

_Phil._ And the latter consists in motion?

_Hyl._ I told you so before.