Locke, Boyle, and the Distinction between Primary and Secondary Qualities

E. M. Curley

The Philosophical Review, Vol. 81, No. 4 (Oct., 1972),438-464.

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 LOCKE, BOYLE, AND THE DISTINCTION
BETWEEN PRIMARY AND SECONDARY
QUALITIES

T HERE is a long-standing tradition, among Locke's critics,

of attributing to him arguments of the following sort:l

(I)We make mistakes in our perceptual judgments about

secondary qualities, but not in our perceptual judgments
about primary qualities.
Therefore, secondary qualities, but not primary qualities,
only exist in the mind (or are subjective, or are not genuine
properties of objects).
or
(2) Our perceptions of secondary qualities, but not our
perceptions of primary qualities, vary as the circumstances
vary in which the perceptions occur.
Therefore, secondary qualities, but not primary qualities,
only exist in the mind (or are subjective, or are not genuine
properties of objects).

Having made this attribution, critics then customarily go on to

point out that, contrary to the premises of these arguments, we do

See, e.g., R.I. Aaron, John Locke (Oxford, 1955; 2nd ed.), pp. 116-127;
D.J. O'Connor, John Locke (London, 1g52), pp. 63-72; Reginald Jackson,
"Locke's Distinction Between Primary and Secondary Qualities,'' in C.B.
Martin and D.M. Armstrong, Locke and Berkeley, a Collection of Critical Essays
(New York, 1968), p. 72; Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy (Garden
City, 1964), vol. V, pt. I, pp. 96-100. One might also add Jonathan Bennett to
the list on the strength of his article, "Substance, Reality and Primary
Qualities," in Martin and Armstrong. But it should be noted that his recent
book, Locke, Berkeley and Hume: the Central Themes (Oxford, 1g71),is free of the
misunderstanding I am attacking and offgrs an exegesis of Locke very like that
I argue for here, though on rather different grounds. Similar remarks apply to
Maurice Mandelbaum's Philosophy, Science and Sense Perception (Baltimore, I 964).
I am very much indebted to Professor Mandelbaum, both for his published
work and for his criticisms, in correspondence, of an earlier draft of this paper.
I have also had useful conversations with Mr. R.A. Naulty, of this university.
 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES

make mistakes in our perceptual judgments about primary

qualities, and that our perceptions of primary qualities do vary
with the circumstances in which they occur. So, it is argued, if
these arguments prove anything about secondary qualities, they
must prove the same thing about primary qualities. Most writers
nowadays infer that the arguments are invalid. Berkeley, appar-
ently, inferred that their conclusion holds of primary qualities
as well as of secondary ones.2
One of the things I hope to show in this paper is that to ascribe
such arguments to Locke is to caricature his views about primary
and secondary qualities. T o establish this I shall need to develop
an account of what Locke's doctrine does commit him to. As a
first step toward that account, I begin with an exposition which is
intended to be, initially, as innocent of interpretation as possible.

Locke starts by distinguishing between ideas "as they are ideas

or perceptions in our minds" and ideas "as they are modifications
of matter in the bodies that cause such perceptions in us."3 The
former he proposes to call "ideas," defined as "whatsoever the
mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception,
thought or understanding"; the latter he proposes to call "qual-
ities," defined as the powers existing in subjects to produce ideas
in our minds (11,8, 8). But at the same time that he gives us this
distinction, Locke warns us that he will not strictly adhere to it,
and that he will sometimes say "ideas" when he means qualities.
Within the class of qualities, Locke distinguishes three sub-
classes: primary, secondary, and a group which we may call,
though he does not, tertiary. The primary qualities are charac-
terized as those qualities of bodies which are "utterly inseparable"
from the bodies no matter what forces act on them. Locke gives a

2 For evidence that Berkeley did not in fact accept the arguments, see
MR. Ayers, "Substance, Reality, and the Great, Dead Philosophers,"
American Philosophical Quarterly, 7 (1970),46.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by J. Yolton (London, 1965),
Bk. 11, Ch. 8, sec. 7.
variety of lists of primary qualities, of which the following is a
c o m p o ~ i t e :solidity,
~ extension, figure, mobility, bulk, texture,
number, and situation. The senses are said to "find7' the primary
qualities in all perceptible bulks of matter and the mind is said
to "find" them in every particle of matter, even if it is too small
to be perceptible. The primary qualities are properties which
bodies cannot be conceived as lacking, and they are held to be
"in the things themselves, whether they are perceived or not"
(11, 8, 23).
The secondary qualities are not characterized initially as being
separable from bodies (though this is said of color at 11, 8, 19);
but as being "nothing in the objects themselves but powers to
produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities"
(11, 8, 10). Examples are colors, sounds, tastes, smells, heat, and
light.5 Locke sometimes says that the secondary qualities are not
really in external objects and do not exist at all whenever, for one
reason or another, they are not being perceived (11, 8, I 7-19).
But when he says this he seems to be identifying the quality with
the idea it produces and forgetting his official doctrine about
secondary qualities, which is that they are powers which bodies
have to produce sensations (Sections 10, 14, 15, 22-26). At the end
of Section 19 he recognizes that the power continues to exist even
when the conditions for its manifestation are not fulfilled. So the
view that objects do not have colors in the dark and the more
general view that they would not have any secondary qualities in
a world lacking perceivers are examples of those unfortunate
inconsistencies for which Locke's work is so famous. But they are
not, I think, essential in any way to his doctrine about primary
and secondary qualities.
Tertiary qualities are the powers a body has, "by reason of the
particular constitution of its primary qualities," to alter the
primary qualities of other bodies so as to make the other bodies
act differently on our senses (11, 8, 23). An example would be the
power of the sun to melt wax. Tertiary qualities, Locke thinks, are
generally seen to be only powers; and not "real qualities" of

See Ch. 8, secs. 9,10,17,22,23 and 26.

6 Again, a composite list. See secs. 10,13,14,16,17.
 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES

things (11,8, 10, and 23-25). Part of what he is concerned to do is

stress the analogy between the secondary and the tertiary quali-
ties, so as to convince his reader that the former are no more
<c
real qualities" of objects than the latter are.

This, I think, will be enough "innocent" exposition to get us

started with the business of interpretation. I shall begin by
outlining some suggestions made by Reginald J a c k ~ o n , ~ not
because Jackson is right, but because he has the happy gift of
erring instructively.
Central to Jackson's account are the distinctions, on the one
hand, between powers and qualities and, on the other, between
powers and ideas. He traces these distinctions to Boyle's "Origin
of Forms and Qualities" and argues persuasively that we need a
firm grip on them to see what Locke is saying and how he has been
misunderstood by subsequent interpreters.
The distinctions may be illustrated by using, as Jackson does,
Boyle's example. For now I shall follow Jackson's exposition of
the example, though this will involve some confusion and some
distortion of Boyle, as I shall argue later on. We are to suppose a
key, and a lock which the key fits. Of the key,

we say it has the power to turn the lock, and of the lock we say it has
the power to be turned. . . . The power to turn the lock does not
belong to the key in itself: a change in the lock might deprive the key
of its power without any change in the key. On the other hand, the
power to turn the lock is different from both the act of turning the lock
and the condition of the lock when turned, and is in no sense a quality

Op. cit. Jackson's article, though it originally appeared in 1929, has been
given a good deal of prominence recently, not only through its reprint in
Martin and Armstrong, but also in discussions by John Yolton (Locke and the
Compass of the Human Understanding [Cambridge, 19701) and Maurice Mandel-
baum (Philosophy, Science and Sense Perception).Though Bennett does not discuss
Jackson explicitly, his article (cited above) has important themes in common
l " .,
with it. Cf. his discussion of the ~ h e n oargument. Tackson also seems to have
influenced Aaron's account of the primary-secondary distinction in Locke.
of the lock. Emphasis on either of these negative truths easily leads to
neglect of the other [p. 571.

That is, if we focus on the fact that the power to turn the lock
is not a property of the key, we are apt, according to Jackson, to
think of it as a property of the lock. But if we focus on the fact
that the power to turn the lock is not a property of the lock, we
are apt to think of it as a property of the key.
I n reality, it is not a property of either one, but a relation
between them. It is because powers are essentially relational
that they are not intrinsic properties of the objects that have them.
For an object to have a power, it must have certain properties-
the key must have a certain size and shape-but these properties
are only necessary and not sufficient conditions for its possession
of the power. The object to which we implicitly relate it in
attributing the power to it must also have certain properties. The
lock must have a certain construction. So knowledge of a thing's
powers is not knowledge of what it is, but only knowledge of what,
under suitable circumstances, it does. Powers are not real qualities
of objects.
Now secondary "qualities," for both Locke and Boyle, are a
kind of power. Therefore, they are relational, and not real,
intrinsic qualities of objects. When Locke calls them secondary
qualities what he means is that they are not qualities at all. And he
naturally likens them to what have here been called "tertiary
qualities," which he thinks are generally seen to be powers, not
qualities. If only we recognized that the so-called secondary
qualities were powers, we would not be tempted to think of them
as properties of objects.
The notion of a power is a difficult and elusive one. Secondary
qualities, as a kind of power, prove equally difficult. As is the case
with powers generally, when we stress that a secondary "quality"
is not a property of one of the objects it relates, we are liable
to confuse it with properties of the other object. So both Boyle and
Locke speak of secondary qualities, sometimes as if they were
identical with the primary qualities which provide their causal
basis in the external object, and sometimes as if they were identical
with their effects in the perceiving subject. They confuse them
 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES

now with qualities proper, and now with ideas. But when they are
speaking carefully and exactly they recognize their relational
nature.

This tendency to speak inexactly about secondary qualities is

certainly a feature of Locke's discussion, as it is of Boyle's. A
substantial portion of Jackson's article is devoted to arguing that
many people have been misled by it, have not recognized the
importance of the concept of power, and have interpreted the
distinction between primary and secondary qualities as a distinc-
tion between qualities and ideas. This part of Jackson's argument
seems to me to be generally correct and I shall not discuss it.7 I
shall concern myself rather with what must be rejected in Jackson's
account of Boyle and Locke.
We may begin to suspect that all is not well with Jackson's
interpretation when we notice that it requires situation not to be a
primary quality. Locke, according to Jackson, is anxious to
maintain an absolute distinction between qualities and relations
(p. 58). Jackson infers that Locke will not include situation among
the primary qualities "because he admits 'place' to be relative"
(p. 66). But in fact Locke does count situation as a primary
quality (11, 8, 23). And so also does Boyle, though he too recog-
nizes the relational nature of ~ituation.~ Indeed, it is arguable
that on Jackson's interpretation, the list of primary qualities
ought not to include motion either, since it is simply a change of
g
situation and will be equally relational.
Again, it is an awkward fact for Jackson that Locke dejines
qualities as powers to produce ideas in our minds (11, 8, 8).
But if all qualities, by definition, are powers, then the distinction
between primary and secondary qualities cannot be a distinction
between qualities and powers. Jackson notices this,1° but dismisses

' See, however, W.H.F. Barnes, "Did Berkeley Misunderstand Locke?" in

Martin and Armstrong.
See "The Origin of Forms and Qualities," in The Works of the Hon. Robert
Boyle (London, 1744),11,461,466,475.
Or as Locke says, "change of distance between two things" (11, 13, 14).
lo P. 71.
the definition as just another instance of Locke's inaccuracy,
pointing to 11, 8, 7 as showing that by qualities Locke really
means to indicate "modifications of matter." But this presupposes
that Locke did distinguish clearly between the powers things have
and the causal basis of those powers. And as Jackson acknowledges
elsewhere, neither Locke nor Boyle was clear about that dis-
tinction.
In any case, we may doubt whether Locke would have adopted
the definition without giving some thought to it. The difficulty
of giving a satisfactory general definition of quality was empha-
sized by Boyle,ll who avoided the problem by explaining what
he meant by qualities through the use of examples rather than
definition. Locke would have known that he was treading on
treacherous ground. Anyone who compares his successive attempts
at a definition will see that the definition of I I , 8 , 8 is the result of a
long process of reflection and that Locke was quite conscious of
being controversial.
Locke recognized the need to give some definition as early as
Draft A, where qualities are said to be "anything existing without
us which affecting any of our senses produces any simple idea
in us." l2A similar definition is given in Draft B, though there the
possible causes of ideas are not restricted to things existing without
us which operate through the senses, but specifically include
"the operations of our minds within."13 So this is meant as a
general definition of "quality" and not just as a definition of
"quality of a body." I t is also a stipulative definition, which
Locke thinks may do some violence to "common use," but which
he says he adopts because he needs some term for "the cause of our
ideas" and "quality" is the most suitable word available. The
same definition is repeated in Draft C, where it is equated with
something very close to the final definition of the Essay: "By the
word quality then I would here and elsewhere be understood to
mean a power in anything to produce in us any simple idea and

11 In his attack on Aristotle's definition, p. 465.

l2 See An Early DraJt of Locke's Essay, ed. b y Aaron and Gibb (Oxford, 1936),
p. 7 3 ; cf. p. 20,
l3 See Rand, (ed.), An Essay Concerning the Understanding, Knowledge, Opinion
and Assent (Cambridge, Mass., 193 I ) , pp. 1 24-1 25.
 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES

the power of altering any of the qualities of any other body."14

The second clause, of course, makes this quite circular. That may
be why the final version in the Essay defines qualities simply as
"powers of producing ideas in us."15
Locke's various attempts at a definition may not be successful.
One objection they seem open to is that they apparently make
self-contradictory the proposition that a body might have qualities
which we cannot perceive for lack of the right sort of sense
organs.16 But the important point here is that the distinction
between primary and secondary qualities is meant to be a dis-
tinction between different kinds of powers, not a distinction
between powers and qualities or relations and qualities. Before
attempting to explain the basis for the distinction, however, we
need to look more closely at the concept of power, and at Jackson's
attribution to Locke and Boyle of the view that powers do not
belong to the things that have them in themselves, and that an
object may lose powers through changes in other objects.

Boyle's discussion of "the relative nature of physical qualities"

(pp. 462 ff.) begins by considering the invention of locks and keys.
Whoever the smith was who made the first lock, that lock was
initially "only a piece of iron, contrived into such a shape." When
he made a key to fit it, "that also in itself considered was nothing
but a piece of iron of such a determinate figure." But because

these two pieces of iron might now be applied to one another after a
certain manner, and that there was a congruity betwixt the wards of the
lock and those of the key, the lock and the key did each of them now
obtain a new capacity, and it became a main part of the notion and

l4 See Aaron, John Locke, 2nd ed., pp. 69-70.

I take it that for Locke in the Essay it is true even of "tertiary qualities"
that they are powers of producing ideas in us, albeit indirectly. Cf. 11, 8, 23 and
26.
16 A possibility which Locke otherwise seer& to allow for, though he denies
that we can imagine what the perception of these qualities might be like (11,
2, 3).
description of a lock that it was capable of being made to lock or
unlock by that piece of iron we call a key, and it was looked upon as a
peculiar faculty and power in the key, that it was fitted to open and
shut the lock, and yet by those new attributes there was not added any
real or physical entity either to the lock or to the key, each of them
remaining indeed nothing but the same piece of iron, just so shaped
as it was before.

So the capacities to lock and be locked are new, but not real
entities added to the lock or the key, which have not been changed.
Boyle also speaks in the same way about the solubility or
insolubility of gold in various acids. He notes that the goldsmiths
of his day count as "the most distinguishing qualities of gold, by
which men may be certain of its being true and not sophisticated,
that it is easily dissoluble in aqua regia and that aqua fortis will
not work upon it" (p. 463). But these acids were not known to the
Roman goldsmiths. Their discovery, Boyle suggests, gave rise to a
new power of gold, but did not change its nature.
Now this seems to me a most unnatural way to speak about
powers and I think it is not surprising that Boyle should also speak
in ways incompatible with it. O n the same page, he identifies the
power of beaten glass to poison with the glass itself "as it is
furnished with that determinate bigness, and figure of parts,
which have been acquired by comminution." But if having the
power is being glass with those primary characteristics, then
presumably the power does characterize the object in itself and
will continue to do so, regardless of changes in those objects
which the power might be exercised on.
Passages like the one just cited are not, I think, to be dismissed
simply as inaccuracies. What they show, rather, is a genuine
ambivalence about the concept of power. This comes out clearly
when Boyle considers the objection (p. 466) that secondary
qualities do have "an absolute being irrelative to us," that snow
would be white and a glowing coal would be hot even if there were
no perceivers about to have the appropriate sensations. Boyle
here uses the notion of a power to concede

that bodies may be said, in a very favourable sense, to have those

qualities we call sensible, though there were no animals in the world:
 PRIMARY AND SECONDARIr QUALITIES

for a body in that case may differ from those bodies, which now are
quite devoid of quality, in its having such a disposition of its constituent
corpuscles that in case it were duly applied to the sensory of an animal,
it would produce such a sensible quality, which a body of another
texture would not [P. 4671.

Though snow would exhibit no color if there were no light or no

animals with a sense of sight, it would still be disposed to reflect
light in the appropriate way, whereas coal or soot would not be
so disposed. Boyle likens the condition of bodies having these
powers to that of a lute, which is said to be in tune if its strings are
so stretched that they would appear to be in tune if they were
played on. I t does not matter whether they are played on (or,
presumably, whether there is anyone about to play on them
or listen to them).
Does Boyle want to hold the view that Jackson attributes to
him-namely, that objects may lose their powers through changes
in the nature of other objects, without undergoing any change in
themselves ? Well, Boyle never considers the problem in quite that
form. For him the question always presents itself in the form "Do
objects acquire new powers when the other objects necessary for
the exercise of those powers come into existence, or are discovered
to exist?" But I do not think this difference in the form of the
question raises any difficulties of principle. The answer in any case
must be that Boyle was drawn in different directions on this issue,
and that he was drawn in different directions for good reasons,
even if he was not clear about what those reasons were. The
question "whether objects acquire or lose powers through changes
in the nature or existence of other objects?" requires different
answers depending on what kind of powers we are considering
and how those powers are defined.
Let me draw a distinction, first of all, between what we might
call individual powers and what we might call sortal powers. By
individual powers I understand the capacities of individual
objects, or classes of objects, to affect or be affected by a given
individual object. If a particular lock can be opened by a par-
ticular key, then I will say that it has the individual power to
be opened by that key. And if each member of a class of locks can
 all be opened by one key, then I will say that each of them has the
same individual power to be opened by that key.
Now it seems to me clear that an object can lose or acquire
individual powers through changes in the nature of the individual
in terms of which the power is defined. If the wards of this key are
altered sufficiently, then this lock, and any other similar one, may
no longer have the capacity to be opened by it. And I think we
would naturally say that though this is a change in the key, it is
not a change in the lock.
But powers may also be conceived of differently. If this lock can
be opened by this key, that is presumably because this key has
certain definite features, which we might specify. Suppose we do
specify those features. We can now say that as well as having the
individual power to be opened by this key, the lock also has the
sortal power to be opened by any key of this kind-that is, any key
which has the relevant features. So we can say that a sortal
power is the power which an individual object, or class of objects,
has to affect or be affected by all individual objects of a certain
kind (where the kind is defined in terms ofjust those features of the
objects which are causally relevant to the manifestation of the
power).
Clearly, sortal powers behave differently than individual
powers do. The lock will not lose its capacity to be opened by any
key of a certain size, shape, and material just because some (or all)
keys which had those features have had, say, their shape altered.
So if we think of powers sortally, we will be inclined to answer
"no" to the question "Do objects acquire new or lose old powers
through changes in the nature of other objects without changing
in themselves?" But if we think of them individually, we will be
inclined to answer "yes." And it is because Boyle has not worked
this out that he finds himself drawn in different directions.
Sometimes he will speak as if a change in a thing's powers is a
change in the thing, and sometimes he will speak as if it is not.
The distinction drawn here between individual powers and
sortal powers is not exhaustive. Not every power which might
look like a sortal power is a sortal power in the special sense I have
given to that term. And some powers which might look like
sortal powers will behave like individual powers.
 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES

Consider the capacity of aqua regia to dissolve gold. This is a

capacity possessed by a class of objects (samples of aqua regia)
to affect all objects of a certain kind (samples of gold). But it is not
necessarily the case that the features by which samples of gold
are defined are those which are causally relevant to gold's
solubility in aqua regia. Suppose that gold is defined as a yellow,
fusible, malleable, fixed substance with a certain weight, and
that the features responsible for its solubility in aqua regia are
properties of its submicroscopic particles which have no necessary
connection with (that is, are not lawfully related to) its defining
characteristics. Then a new refining process might produce a
gold (that is, a metal which had the defining characteristics of
gold) which was not soluble in aqua regia. If this came to be the
only kind of gold produced, we might say that aqua regia no
longer had the power to dissolve gold, though it had not under-
gone any change in itself. The power to dissolve gold would
behave like an individual power.
O n the other hand, if the defining characteristics of gold are
necessarily connected with the features relevant to solubility
in aqua regia, so that only a material which has submicroscopic
particles of the right sort for solubility can have that combination
of characteristics which define gold, then this hypothetical
situation is ruled out. The power to dissolve gold, though it will
still not be a sortal power, will behave like one.
One further comment about power. For every individual
power there must be a corresponding sortal power. If one object
can affect another in a certain way, then this must be (in part)
because of certain properties the affected object has and it must
be possible in principle to specify a kind of thing, such that the
first object can affect all things of that kind in that way. The
converse is not true. A thing may have a sortal power without
having any corresponding individual powers, simply because there
are no individuals of the relevant kind. So the notion of a sortal
power seems to be the primary notion of a power.
If we think of powers sortally, then it is very natural to regard
them as intrinsic to their objects, in the sense that a change in the
object's sortal powers will always involve a change in the object
itself and not in any other object. And if we think of sortal powers
as intrinsic to their objects, it is easy to identify them with the
properties which provide their causal basis.
But that seems to be a mistake. We want to say that a thing has
the sortal powers it has because of the properties it has. The key
has the power to open all locks of a certain kind because it has a
certain size, shape, and so forth. This "because" is a causal one.
In using it, we are not elucidating the features which define the
power; we are implying the existence of a causal law relating
objects of one kind to objects of another. Locke appears to think of
causal laws in Cartesian fashion, as depending on the arbitrary
will of God (IVY3, 29) and so, presumably, changeable in
principle. If one takes that view of laws, then even an object's
sortal powers might well change without there being any other
change in the object. Though it may be a fact that any key of a
certain size, shape, and so forth has the power to open any lock
of a certain kind, it is nonetheless, on this view of laws, a con-
tingent fact that an object with those properties has that power.
The properties and the power are distinct, though universally
conjoined. But if the properties and the power are distinct, then
it must be a mistake to define the properties as powers. Having the
properties explains, but is not the same thing as, having the
power. So it will be a mistake to offer any general definition of
quality of the form:
X has the quality Q = df X has the power to P.
In particular, it will be a mistake to offer a general definition
of qualities as powers of producing ideas in us.

Nevertheless, Locke does frequently identify powers with the

qualities on which they depend. I t is this which makes plausible
his definition of qualities as powers which objects have to produce
ideas in us. The distinction between primary and secondary
qualities is a distinction between two kinds of power to produce
ideas. The fundamental basis for the distinction is that the ideas
produced by primary qualities resemble their objects, whereas
those produced by secondary qualities no more resemble some-
 PRIMARY A N D SECONDARY QUALITIES

thing existing in the object "than the names that stand for them
are the likeness of our ideas" (11, 8, 7; 11, 8, 15). I t is because
secondary qualities produce ideas lacking any resemblance to
their cause that they are said to be nothing but powers, or on9
powers, or barely powers (11, 8, Sections 10, 15, 23-25).
I n this they are analogous to tertiary qualities (11, 8, 24-25).
We see no similarity between the effect of a tertiary quality (say
the melting of wax by the heat of the sun) and the cause of that
effect. So we regard the melting as the effect of bare power, not the
communication of a quality really in the cause. But we are not
aware of the causal role of the primary qualities in the production
of our ideas of secondary qualities. So we are apt to imagine that
our ideas of secondary qualities (like our ideas of primary quali-
ties) are the effect of something in the object which they do
resemble, and so are real qualities, not just powers.
Now there are difficulties about distinguishing between primary
and secondary qualities in this way. One minor difficulty is that
the class of secondary qualities overlaps the class of tertiary
qualities, so that Locke seems committed to maintaining that
heat both is and is not generally regarded as a bare power rather
than a real quality. I t is thought to be a bare power because, as a
tertiary quality (the cause of the melting of wax), its effect is seen
not to resemble the cause. And it is thought not to be a bare
power because, as a secondary quality (the cause of our sensation
of heat), its effect is imagined (wrongly) to resemble its cause.
But the major difficulty concerns the concept of resemblance
and the doctrine that our ideas of primary qualities do resemble
something in their objects. Many commentators seem to have
agreed with Berkeley that this is nonsense.17 And if the talk of
resemblance means that my idea of a square object is itself
square, then perhaps it is nonsense. Other commentatorsls have
supposed that Locke's talk of resemblance commits him to the
view that we never make mistakes in our perceptual judgments
about primary qualities. What I contend is that we can make
sense of the talk of resemblance without supposing that Locke
l7 The Principles of Human Knowledge, sec. g: " A n idea can be like nothing but
another idea." Cf. Jackson, pp. 68-69; Bennett, pp. 107-108.
l8 E.g., O'Connor, p. 67; and Aaron, p. 126.
held any strong thesis about the accuracy of our perceptual
judgments of primary qualities.
Locke does not argue for the view that our ideas of primary
qualities are resemblances of them. He takes it to be the usual
view that all our ideas of objects are resemblances of something
in the object (11,8, 7) and he is mainly concerned to show that a
great many of our ideas are exceptions to this generalization.
But I think we can work out why he thought some were, by
seeing why he thought some were not.
Locke first states the doctrine that the ideas of primary quali-
ties of bodies are resemblances of them, whereas the ideas of
secondary qualities are not, in 11,8, 15. I t is presented there as the
obvious conclusion of an argument which is stated in Sections
I I - I 4. Oddly enough, the main burden of these preceding sections
seems to be that the ideas of primary qualities and the ideas of
secondary qualities are both produced in us in the same way-
namely, by the operation of insensible particles on our senses.
What is most puzzling about this is that an apparent similarity
in the causation of our ideas of primary and secondary qualities
should be made the basis for the central distinction between them.
But if we follow up a hint which Locke drops later in the Essay
(IV, 3, 12-13; IV, 3, 28), I think we can resolve the puzzle. The
hint lies in Locke's doctrine that there is no "affinity" (or "no
discoverable connexion" or "no conceivable connexion") between
the cause of our ideas of secondary qualities and the effect.
Locke's point, I take it, is this: If we consider the kind of causal
account we would give of our (visual) perception of, say, the shape
of an object, we will find that it involves descriptions of how rays
of light are reflected from the surface of the object and focused
by the lens of the eye on the retina. The nerve endings in the
retina which are stimulated by the light rays transmit a message
to the brain and a perception of a particular shape is produced.
We see the object as elliptical, perhaps. I t is not essential to the
story that the object be elliptical, but it is essential that the object
have some shape and that that shape be a causal factor, via the laws
of perspective and refraction, in determining the pattern of
stimulation of nerve endings in the retina.
O n the other hand, if we consider the kind of causal account
 PRIMARY A N D SECONDARY QUALITIES

we would give of our perception of the color of an object, we find

a very different situation. We will still talk about the reflection
of light rays from the surface of the object, their stimulation of the
nerve endings in the retina, the transmission of a message through
the nerves to the brain and the production of a perception-this
time a perception of color. If we are Cartesian, we will correlate
the differences in our color perception with differences in the
rotational velocities of the particles making up the light rays and
we may go on to explain those differing velocities by reference to
the texture of the reflecting surface. But whatever explanation
we give,lg it will not be necessary in this explanation to invoke
anything other than the same primary qualities of things which
are used to explain our perceptions of primary qualities. And
while the causal explanation of our perception of the shape of an
object enables us to understand20 why we perceive it as having a
shape (since its having some shape is essential to the explanation)
nothing in the causal explanation of our perception of color really
makes it intelligible that we should see the object as colored (since
only primary qualities are involved in the explanation). As
Leibniz' spokesman in the New Essays remarks: "One could say
that when the power is intelligible and can be explained distinctly,
it should be counted among the primary qualities; but when it is
only sensible and gives only a confused idea, it will be necessary
to put it among the secondary qualities" (11,8, 9-10). This sums
up very well Locke's claim that the ideas of primary qualities

l9 On the variety of theories held about colors by seventeenth-century

philosopher-scientists, see A.I. Sabra, Theories of Light From Descartes to Newton
(London, I 967).
*O Or at least to understand this as well as we understand anything about
perception. I think Locke would regard the perceptual process as intelligible
up to the point at which there is interaction between mind and body, because
it is explicable on mechanical principles up to that point. Mechanical explana-
tions are inherently intelligible because they involve the transmission of motion
from one body to another by contact which is "the only way which we can
conceive bodies to operate in" (11, 8, I I ; cf. the note on this passage in Camp-
bell Fraser's edition). But the action of body on mind is unintelligible, so long,
a t least, as the mind is conceived as a non-extended substance. See the very
interesting discussion in Locke's An Examination of P. Malebranche's Ofiinion
of Seeing All Things in God, secs. g and 10, in The Works of John Locke (London,
1824), 8, 115-217.
are "resemblances of patterns" really existing in bodies them-
selves, whereas the ideas of secondary qualities have no resem-
blance to the features of bodies which cause them. Locke's
characterization of the primary qualities as "original" qualities
of objects rightly suggests what we would now put by saying that
they are qualities designated by the primitive terms in the
scientific theory of perception.
Before leaving this account of Locke's distinction, let me make
two concluding remarks. First of all, on this interpretation, there
is no difficulty is seeing why situation is a primary quality, even
though- it is relational. The attribution of some situation to an
object will enter into the causal explanation of its being perceived
as having a particular situation, though the situation attributed
to it need not be the situation it is perceived as having. Motion is
more complicated, since our explanation of the fact that a body is
perceived as moving may not attribute motion to that body, if we
think of motion as a change of situation with respect to absolute
space. But the explanation will attribute motion to that body in
the sense of a change of situation with respect either to the body
of the perceiver or to some other body.
Second, the account I have given does not commit Locke to any
thesis about the accuracy of our perceptions of primary qualities
or about their independence of the circumstances of the perceiver.
Indeed it rather presupposes that Locke knew that our perceptions
of primary qualities vary as the circumstances vary in which the
perceptions occur. If there is independent evidence for the view
that Locke did not know this, then my interpretation will, to that
extent, be at a disadvantage. whether or not there is such
evidence is a question I shall consider in the next section. So far
all I claim to have shown is that Locke's talk of resemblance need
not be interpreted as committing him to certain theses that have
been widely ascribed to him.

VI'

We want to consider what other evidence, apart from his talk

of resemblance, there may be for taking Locke to be anaware
 PRIMARY A N D SECONDARY QUALITIES

that we make mistakes in our perceptual judgments about

primary qualities or that our perceptions of primary qualities
vary with the circumstances in which they occur. But before we
consider the evidence, we must prepare our minds to look at it
very critically. The influence of three centuries of misunder-
standing Locke is difficult to shake off.
Consider, for a moment, the sorts of things of which Locke
must have been unaware if he did not know these facts. He must
not have realized that things look smaller when they are far away
than they do when they are close up; or that a thing may appear
to be moving not because it is moving, but because we are
moving; or that an object may be made to seem larger or smaller
if we look at it through a pair of glasses, or a telescope, or a
microscope; or that we often make mistakes about the size and
shape of distant objects; or that a flat surface can be made to seem
to have depth by being painted in certain ways; or that mirrors
whose surfaces are irregular give different reflections of the sizes
and shapes of objects than do those whose surfaces are regular;
or that objects seem to have a different texture when viewed
through a microscope than they do when viewed with the naked
eye.
Obviously, it would be possible to extend this list ad nauseam.
But the point should be clear enough by now. There are a great
many familiar facts by which the occurrence of perceptual error
and relativity concerning primary qualities can be illustrated.
These facts are not esoteric facts, but ones which contemporary
educational television programs think suitable for the instruction
of pre-school children. Moreover, they are absolutely fundamental
to two of the most important sciences of Locke's day, optics and
astronomy. I t is difficult to see how anyone could have even a
superficial understanding of those sciences if he did not know
these facts. And Locke's understanding of the science of his time
was far from superficiaL21
But even if these facts were not familiar from everyday life and
fundamental to science, one might suppose that Locke could have
21 As his Elements of Natural Philosophy ilkustrates, and as James Axtell has
recently argued i n "Locke, Newton and the T w o Cultures," in John Locke:
Problems and Perspectives, ed. b y John Yolton (Cambridge, 1969).

455
learned them from his study of philosophy. After all, discussions
of perceptual error and relativity are as old as philosophy itself.
And if we look at the classical discussion^^^ of these topics, we
find that the examples involve primary qualities as often as they
do secondary qualities. So students of philosophy are constantly
being told that square towers look round in the distance, or that
the oar which appears bent when in the water looks straight
when out of it, or that the same ship which seems small and sta-
tionary at a distance seems large and in motion from close at hand.
Indeed, if we look at the most important discussions of per-
ceptual error and relativity by seventeenth-century philosophers,
we find a decided preference for examples involving primary
qualities. The favorite example was the sun, which is perceived
as a flat, circular body (shape), smaller than the earth (size), and
about two hundred feet away (situation), according to Cartesian
This emphasis on primary qualities is particularly
striking in what is perhaps the most extended seventeenth-century
discussion of perceptual error, Book I of Malebranche's Recherche
de la v&t4 a book which we know that Locke read and commented
on. Malebranche begins with a chapter on our errors about
extension (Ch. 6 ) , devotes the next chapter to our errors about
shape, and the next two chapters to our errors about motion.
This takes up some 42 pages in the new critical edition
of Malebranche.Z4 Then he lumps together Locke's secondary
qualities under the heading "sensible qualities" and gives them,
collectively, three rather short chapters (22 pages).
Of course, an acquaintance with the literature on Locke is not

E.g., in Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Bk. I, or Lucretius,

On the Nature of Things.
23 Cf. Descartes, The Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry and Meteorology, ed.
by Paul Olscamp (Indianapolis, 1965)~p. H I . See also Meditations Three
and Six, in Philosophical Works of Descartes, ed. by Haldane and Ross (Dover,
1955)~ I, 161, 191. The Haldane and Ross translation of the latter passage is
inaccurate in mentioning only the possibility of error about the shape of the
sun and omitting Descartes's reference t~ the possibility of error about its size.
Cf. Descartes, CEuvres, ed. by Adam and Tannery, VIII, 80. The same example
is used by both Spinoza and Malebranche. See the Ethics, 11, P35S; the
Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding, sec. 2 I ; and La recherche de la
vka'td, I, 7, 5.
24 Euvres compl2tes, ed. by G. Rodis-Lewis, et al. (Paris, 1958), Vol. I.
 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES

likely to encourage the view that authors always read carefully

those other authors on whom they write books. But Malebranche's
claims about perception were relevant to aspects of his doctrine
that Locke wanted to criticize and Locke does seem to have
noticed these claims. Malebranche attempts to establish his
doctrine that we see all things in God by showing the only con-
ceivable alternative theories to be false. Among the alternative
views he argues against is the "peripatetic" opinion that vision
involves the transmission of a material "species" from the object
perceived to the percipient, a species which resembles the object
(Recherche, 111, 2, 2). Among the arguments he uses is that it is
impossible on this view to account for the fact that the apparent
size of visible objects is altered by their distance and by optical
lenses.
Now Locke, who holds a theory of vision which involves the
transmission of material rays of light, consisting of extremely
small particle~,~5 is anxious to make it clear that Malebranche's
arguments do not apply to his theory. He is perfectly willing to
concede the perceptual facts Malebranche mentions and to
allow that they are valid objections against the peripatetic account
of vision. But he thinks they are not valid against his theory
because it postulates a very different kind of material cause of
vision, which not only is consistent with these facts, but helps to
explain them. So, for example, in discussing a case of perceptual
error involving number, he argues that if we accept his account
of the visual process, we will be able to understand why the
illusion occurs.
I n view of all this, it is perhaps not surprising that in the chapter
of the Essay which immediately follows his account of the dis-
tinction between primary and secondary qualities, when he wants
to illustrate the thesis that our perceptions are often altered by
unconscious judgments (11, 9, 8), Locke should use an example
involving the misperception of shape-or that, five chapters later,
in discussing the origin of our idea of duration, he should take
notice of the relativity of our perceptions of motion (11,14, 6)--or
that he should argue in Draft B that; we inevitably err when we

26 See An Examination of P. Malebranche's Opinion, secs. 8-14.

try to make very precise judgments about the length of material
things (Sections 42-43).
We should now, I think, be in a suitable frame of mind to
consider such positive evidence as there is, apart from the talk of
resemblance, for the claim that Locke overlooked the error and
relativity in our perceptions of primary qualities. This view has
some excuse in 11, 8, 21, a passage which has been very badly
misunderstood. For Locke is not there concerned to argue that,
because we may err about temperatures, things do not really have
temperaturesz6 or that, because our perceptions of temperature
vary with the conditions under which temperatures are perceived,
temperatures are not genuine properties of objects.27What Locke
is concerned with is providing indirect evidence for a particular
mechanical theory about the causation of our perceptions of
heat-namely, the theory that our perceptions of heat and cold are
caused in the first instance by variations in the motion of the
particles making up our nerves. The claim is that if we accept
this hypothesis and accept with it the mechanical theory of heat
(namely, that heat, as a characteristic of an external object, may
be identified with motion of the particles making up the object),
then we can understand why the same water, at the same time,
may feel cold to one hand and hot to the other. The level of
particle motion in the one hand must have been greater before
contact than the level in the object, so that the level in that hand
was decreased by contact, producing a sensation of cold. Con-
versely, the antecedent level of motion in the other hand must have
been lower than that in the object, so that it was raised by contact,
producing a sensation of heat.28 I t is a very crude, qualitative
argument, but it is in spirit a scientific argument, intended to
support a particular theory about the causation of our perceptions.
What I think has misled people about this passage is Locke's

26 As Bennett once suggested. See Martin and Armstrong, p. 109.

27 See O'Connor, op. cit., pp. 64-65, 70-71.
28 Note that this does not purport to explain why a high level of motion of
nerve particles should be associated with a sensation of this sort. That, on
Locke's view, is still a mystery. All that is made intelligible is the fact that our
perceptions vary while the intrinsic characteristics of the object remain the
same.
 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES

statement that, while it is possible for the same water to produce

a sensation of heat in one hand and a sensation of cold in the
other, figure does not show a similar variability. The same object
which produces the idea of a square when felt by one hand never
produces the idea of a globe when felt by another. O n the usual
reading this remark is (obviously) false in its implication that we
never err about primary qualities or that perceptions of primary
qualities do not vary with the condition of the perceiver. But
Locke states no general thesis about the perception of primary
qualities; he only makes a claim about the perception of one kind
of primary quality (figure) by one kind of sense (touch). The
claim is that, given the mechanics of tactual perception, we never
do as a matter of fact have the kind of gross variation in our
perception of shapes that we have in our perception of tem-
peratures. This is still false, or at least could be false, since we
can well imagine that a selective anesthetization of the nerve
endings in one hand (or some technical fault in their operation)
might cause us to perceive the same object as square with one
hand and round with the other. But if it is false, it is not so
obviously false as what the usual reading requires.
I cannot hope, within any reasonable limits of space, to provide
an exhaustive account of all the passages in Locke which have
encouraged misunderstandings of his views about p e r ~ e p t i o n . ~ ~
But I will try, in closing this section, to deal briefly with one more,
very influential passage. I n II,23, I I , Locke discusses the question
"How would the world appear if we had senses acute enough to
discern the primary qualities of the minute particles of which
bodies are composed?'' Part of his answer is that the particles
would be seen not to have any secondary qualities. He supports
this by appealing to the appearance which various bodies have
under a microscope. Sand, pounded glass, hair, and blood either
are, or are in great measure, pellucid and so colorless.
This argument seems to have been assimilated by many critics
to the (supposed) earlier argument from variability to subjectivity.

28Some of the other passages, however, are dealt with by Mandelbaum,

o$. cit.
Berkeley, for exampleY3Otreats the microscopic evidence as if it
showed merely that things look dzferent with respect to secondary
qualities under a microscope-that is, that they have a different
color. And he makes his usual point, that it is equally true of
primary qualities that they present a different appearance under
a microscope. But of course Locke knows that. He says himself in
the very next section that if we had more acute senses, "nothing
would appear the same . . . the visible ideas of everything would
be different." Locke's point about microscopic vision, in so far as
it is a special point about secondary qualities, is not that things
have different colors when viewed through a microscope, but that
they (or parts of them) have no color at all.
This observation is relevant to quite a different issue from the
one Berkeley raises. One distinction Locke does make between
primary and secondary qualities is that the former, but not the
latter, are inseparable from bodies. It is customary for Locke's
critics to reply to this that the supposed distinction depends on
taking the primary qualities as determinables and the secondary
ones as determinates. I t may be that a body cannot cease to
have shape, but it can cease to have the particular shape it has.
And though a body can cease to have a particular color, it cannot
cease to have color. So, it is argued, the primary and secondary
qualities are on a par after all. Locke's microscopic observations
are meant to show that, just as bodies can sometimes be tasteless
and odorless, so they can also sometimes be colorless.

VII

In the preceding section I argued that it was hardly credible

that Locke should have failed to know about the error and
variability of our perceptions of primary qualities. One reason
for this is that the "new philosophers" of the seventeenth century
characteristically preferred to illustrate these phenomena with
examples involving primary qualities. In this concluding section,

30 Cf. Berkeley's use of the passage in Three Dialogues Between Hylas and
Philonous, in Berkeley's Philosophical Writings, ed. by D. Armstrong (London,
1965), PP '48-155.
 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES

I should like to suggest that this preference was not an accident,

but was motivated by a view these philosophers held in common
about the nature of secondary qualities.31
Descartes, like Locke, takes it to be the usual view that all our
ideas are resemblances of something in the object. Like Locke,
he holds that this usual view is false, since only some ideas are
like their cause in the object. Like Locke, he compares the com-
plete lack of resemblance between the other ideas and their causes
to the complete lack of resemblance between words and the ideas
they signify.
Now this distinction between two different kinds of idea
introduces certain complications into Descartes's discussions of
error. When he is dealing with errors involving primary qualities,
he can use the notion of a greater or lesser degree of resemblance
between the idea and the object to characterize the difference
between veridical and illusory perception (or rather between true
and false perceptual judgments). We have two ideas of the sun,
one derived from looking at it, the other derived from astronomy.
The one idea represents the sun as much smaller than the earth,
the other as much larger. If I base my judgment on the second
idea, I will judge truly, whereas if I take the first at its face value,
I will judge falsely. For the real size of the sun, the size I attribute
to it in accounting causally for my sensory idea, is more like that
which my astronomical idea represents it as having. Where we
attribute some determinate size to the sun itself, we can attach a
tolerably clear sense to saying that our perception of its size is
either veridical or erroneous.
But when it comes to secondary qualities, this sort of account
of error becomes highly problematic. Like Locke, Descartes
wants to say that those qualities are not basic properties of things,

31 Jackson contends that in their espousal of the "corpuscular philosophy"

Locke and Boyle were attacking both the scholastics and the Cartesians
(pp. 56-58); but Boyle numbers the Cartesians among the corpuscularians
and says quite explicitly that in "The Origin of Forms and Qualities" he
is writing against the scholastics and "rather for the Corpuscularians in general,
than any party of them" (p. 455).
The main texts in Descartes are the opeding chapters of Le Monde (Adam
and Tannery, t. I I ), the Third and Sixth Meditations, and sections 188-203
of Part IV of the Principles of Philosophy.
that they can be explained in terms of other, very different,
qualities which are basic.32So there is nothing in things which is
at all like what our ideas represent as being there, and we cannot
ask how close the resemblance is between the color our idea
represents the wax as having and the color we attribute to it in
accounting for our idea.
If we focus on the fact that there is nothing in the object even
remotely like what our idea represents as being there and if we
have a Cartesian model of veridical perception, then we are apt to
say, not that we sometimes make false perceptual judgments

32 Cf. Le Monde, pp. 25-26. In saying that Descartes regards color, etc.,
as properties of bodies, I set myself against a well-established tradition in
Cartesian interpretation. M.R. Ayers writes:
Who could deny that the central doctrines in Descartes' philosophy are
associated with his belief that extension is really in body, while color
exists only in the mind or "is related simply to the intimate union that
exists between body and mind" [ok. cit., p. 441 ?
I am afraid that I must deny this, since I deny that Descartes believes color
to exist only in the mind. I cannot argue this in detail without making a long
paper excessively long, but I can point out that "color exists only in the mind"
is a very doubtful gloss of the phrase Ayers quotes, particularly since Descartes
goes on to contend in the next paragraph (Principles 11, 4) that color, etc., are
accidental rather than essential qualities of bodies.
The passage which seems to me to come closest to justifying the Berkeleyani-
zation of Descartes is Principles I, 66-70, where Descartes compares the prejudice
involved in our attribution of colors to external bodies with the prejudice
involved in our attribution of pain to parts of our own body. But a careful
reading of this passage, with attention to the variations in the French version,
will show clearly that Descartes does not think the two prejudices are entirely
parallel. The mistake in the case of pain lies in our location of the pain outside
the mind; in the case of color, it lies in our supposing that color as a quality
of external bodies is like the sensation of color in the mind. Principles I, 70
explains how attributions of colors to objects are to be understood-as attri-
butions of a capacity for causing certain sensations in us-it does not deny that
they can ever properly be made.
A similar distinction is made in the Sixth Meditation (Adam and Tannery,
VII, 81). In the first paragraph Descartes discusses pain, hunger, and thirst,
and concludes that they are only confused modes of thought. In the second
paragraph he discusses our perceptions, of color, sound, taste, etc., and con-
cludes that our varying perceptions of these qualities do correspond to varia-
tions in the things themselves, though the variations in the things may not be
like our perceptions of them. Secondary qualities cannot be ascribed to the
body alone, any more than to the mind alone (Principles I, 48), because, as
powers of producing sensations, they involve essentially a relation to a perceiver.
 PRIMART AND SECONDARY QUALITIES

about secondary qualities, but that we never make true ones.

Descartes, of course, is most anxious not to say that. God is no
deceiver, so there must be some truth even in our judgments about
secondary qualities. He gets around the difficulty by developing,
in the Sixth Meditation, the theory that our perceptions of secondary
qualities are given to us by God as guides to the presence of other,
non-obvious characteristics of things, which may be beneficial or
harmful to us. A bitter taste may be a sign that a berry will be
poisonous.
Now there is something of this Cartesian doctrine in L ~ c k e . ~ ~
But in one crucial respect Locke's view of the matter is different.
Unlike Descartes, Locke deploys the notion of secondary qualities
as powers of producing sensations to give a different answer to
the problem of the nature of truth and error concerning secondary
qualities. The question "Is my present idea ofwhiteness a fiction?"
for him takes the form "Is there in the object before me a power of
producing an idea of whiteness in me?" And since, ex hypothesi,
an idea of whiteness is now occurring in me, Locke finds it
difficult to see how he could give a negative answer to this
question:

Our simple ideas can none of them be false in respect of things existing
without us. For the truth of these appearances or perceptions consisting
. . . only in their being answerable to the powers in external objects to
produce by our senses such appearances in us, and each of them being .
in the mind such as it is suitable to the power that produced it, and
which alone it represents, it cannot upon that account, or as referred to
such a pattern, befalse. Blue oryellow, bitter or sweet can never be false
ideas: these perceptions in the mind are just such as they are there,
answering the powers appointed by God to produce them, and so are
truly what they are and are intended to be [11, 32, 161.

Note that though Locke says that simple ideas cannot be false, his
examples are all examples of ideas of secondary qualities. And his
argument requires the conclusion to hold for all and only ideas
of secondary qualities. An idea of a primary quality, even if it is
simple, does have something in the object which it "answers to"

33 See, e.g., 11, 30, 2; 11, 31, 2; 11, 32, 14-16;and IV, 4, 4.
beyond the capacity of the object to produce that idea in us.
We attribute the quality to the object in a nondispositional sense
in order to account for the object's possession of the capacity for
producing that idea. So the quality provides a standard by
reference to which the idea can be judged false. But an idea of a
secondary quality, even if it is complex, has nothing to answer
to except a "bare power." We do not attribute the quality to the
object nondispositionally in accounting for its capacity for
producing this idea. There is, therefore, no further norm to which
it can fail to conform.
So where Descartes has to resist the temptation to say that none
of our ideas of secondary qualities are true, Locke's view is that
none of them can be false. What he needs, to be able to distinguish
between veridical and illusory perception of secondary qualities,
is a more sophisticated dispositional theory. An object is blue
not if it has the capacity to produce an idea of blue in me, but if it
has the capacity to produce an idea of blue in a normal perceiver
under certain standard conditions. Locke has not hit on that way
of avoiding paradox. So he is left with a theory according to
which error in the perception of secondary qualities is impossible.
But one would scarcely guess this from reading the traditional
accounts of his doctrine concerning primary and secondary
qualities.
E. M. CURLEY
The Australian National Uniuersit_v