Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/205

Ch. 9. with which primary qualities the ideas produced in us have no resemblance.

§ 26. To conclude, beside those before-mentioned primary qualities in bodies, viz. bulk, figure, extension, number, and motion of their solid parts; all the rest whereby we take notice of bodies, and distinguish them one from another, are nothing else but several powers in them depending on those primary qualities; whereby they are fitted, either by immediately operating on our bodies, to produce several different ideas in us; or else, by operating on other bodies, so to change their primary qualities, as to render them capable of producing ideas in us different from what before they did. The former of these, I think, may be called secondary qualities, immediately perceivable: the latter, secondary qualities, mediately perceivable.

§ 1. as it is the first faculty of the mind, exercised about our ideas; so it is the first and simplest idea we have simple idea from reflection, and is by some called thinking in general. Though thinking, in the propriety of the English tongue, signifies that sort of operation in the mind about its ideas, wherein the mind is active; where it, with~some degree of voluntary attention, considers any thing. For in bare naked perception, the mind is, for the most part, only passive; and what it perceives, it cannot avoid perceiving.