Page:Supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica - with preliminary dissertations on the history of the sciences - illustrated by engravings (IA gri 33125011196181).pdf/150

96 most refined conclusions yet formed concerning the intellectual phenomena, I feel it due to the memory of the author, to pause for a few moments, in order to vindicate his claim to some leading ideas, commonly supposed by the present race of metaphysicians to be of much later origin. In doing so, I shall have an opportunity, at the same time, of introducing one or two remarks, which, I trust, will be useful in clearing up the obscurity, which is allowed by some of the ablest followers of Descartes and Locke, still to hang over this curious discussion.

I have elsewhere observed, that Descartes has been very generally charged by the writers of the last century, with a sophistical play upon words in his doctrine concerning the non-existence of secondary qualities; while, in fact, he was the first person by whom the fallacy of this scholastic paralogism was exposed to the world. In proof of this, it might be sufficient to refer to his own statement, in the first part of the Principia; but, for a reason which will immediately appear, I think it more advisable, on this occasion, to borrow the words of one of his earliest and ablest commentators. “It is only (says Father Malebranche) since the time of Descartes, that to those confused and indeterminate questions, whether fire is hot, grass green, and sugar sweet, philosophers are in use to reply, by distinguishing the equivocal meaning of the words expressing sensible qualities. If by heat, cold, and savour, you understand such and such a disposition of parts, or some unknown motion of sensible qualities, then fire is hot, grass green, and sugar sweet. But if by heat and other qualities you understand what I feel by fire, what I see in grass, &c.

10