But how is it possible that pain, be it as little active as you please, should exist in an unperceiving substance?
And, it being too visibly absurd to hold that pain or pleasure can be in an unperceiving Substance, men are more easily weaned from believing the external existence of the Secondary than the Primary Qualities.
Can you then conceive it possible that they should exist in an unperceiving thing?
And is any unperceiving thing capable of pain or pleasure?
I think you granted before that no unperceiving being was capable of pleasure, any more than of pain.
But, I do not know what is meant when it is said that an unperceiving substance hath inherent in it and supports either ideas or the archetypes of ideas.
This is my explication of your difficulty; and how it can serve to make your tenet of an unperceiving material substratum intelligible, I would fain know.
You indeed, who by snow and fire mean certain external, unperceived, unperceiving substances, are in the right to deny whiteness or heat to be affections inherent in them.
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.
And, it being too visibly absurd to hold that pain or pleasure can be in an unperceiving substance, men are more easily weaned from believing the external existence of the Secondary than the Primary Qualities.
And, doth it not follow from your own concessions, that the perception of light and colours, including no action in it, may exist in an unperceiving substance?
I do not believe that it hath any figure or motion at all, being already convinced, that no sensible qualities can exist in an unperceiving substance.
You indeed, who by SNOW and fire mean certain external, unperceived, unperceiving substances, are in the right to deny whiteness or heat to be affections inherent in THEM.
But extension, figure, and motion are only ideas existing in the mind, and neither these ideas nor their archetypes can exist in an unperceiving substance.
