Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous by George Berkeley
page 14 of 139 (10%)
page 14 of 139 (10%)
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PHIL. _I_ do not pretend that warmth is as great a pleasure as heat is
a pain. But, if you grant it to be even a small pleasure, it serves to make good my conclusion. HYL. I could rather call it an INDOLENCE. It seems to be nothing more than a privation of both pain and pleasure. And that such a quality or state as this may agree to an unthinking substance, I hope you will not deny. PHIL. If you are resolved to maintain that warmth, or a gentle degree of heat, is no pleasure, I know not how to convince you otherwise than by appealing to your own sense. But what think you of cold? HYL. The same that I do of heat. An intense degree of cold is a pain; for to feel a very great cold, is to perceive a great uneasiness: it cannot therefore exist without the mind; but a lesser degree of cold may, as well as a lesser degree of heat. PHIL. Those bodies, therefore, upon whose application to our own, we perceive a moderate degree of heat, must be concluded to have a moderate degree of heat or warmth in them; and those, upon whose application we feel a like degree of cold, must be thought to have cold in them. HYL. They must. PHIL. Can any doctrine be true that necessarily leads a man into an absurdity? HYL. Without doubt it cannot. |
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