PHIL. But what will you say, Hylas, if it shall appear that the case is the same with regard to all other sensible qualities, and that they can no more be supposed to exist without the mind, than heat and cold?
HYL. Then indeed you will have done something to the purpose; but that is what I despair of seeing proved.
PHIL. Let us examine them in order. What think you of TASTES, do they exist without the mind, or no?
HYL. Can any man in his senses doubt whether sugar is sweet, or wormwood bitter?
PHIL. Inform me, Hylas. Is a sweet taste a particular kind of pleasure or pleasant sensation, or is it not?
HYL. It is.
PHIL. And is not bitterness some kind of uneasiness or pain?
HYL. I grant it.
PHIL. If therefore sugar and wormwood are unthinking corporeal substances existing without the mind, how can sweetness and bitterness, that is, Pleasure and pain, agree to them?
HYL. Hold, Philonous, I now see what it was delude time. You asked whether heat and cold, sweetness at were not particular sorts of pleasure and pain; to which simply, that they were. Whereas I should have thus distinguished: those qualities, as perceived by us, are pleasures or pair existing in the external objects. We must not therefore conclude absolutely, that there is no heat in the fire, or sweetness in the sugar, but only that heat or sweetness, as perceived by us, are not in the fire or sugar. What say you to this?