All you know is, that you have such a certain
idea or appearance in your own mind. But what is this to the real
tree or stone? I tell you that colour, figure, and hardness,
which you perceive, are not the real natures of those things, or
in the least like them. The same may be said of all other real
things, or corporeal substances, which compose the world. They
have none of them anything of themselves, like those sensible
qualities by us perceived. We should not therefore pretend to
affirm or know anything of them, as they are in their own nature.
. But surely, Hylas, I can distinguish gold, for
example, {228} from iron: and how could this be, if I knew not
what either truly was?
. Believe me, Philonous, you can only distinguish
between your own ideas. That yellowness, that weight, and other
sensible qualities, think you they are really in the gold? They
are only relative to the senses, and have no absolute existence
in nature. And in pretending to distinguish the species of real
things, by the appearances in your mind, you may perhaps act as
wisely as he that should conclude two men were of a different
species, because their clothes were not of the same colour.
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