Note 835 — Chapter V · (continued 3)

He says (Works, vol. i. pp. 31, 32), ‘Whoever has the smallest tincture of metaphysics will know the distinction pointed at here between the qualities of bodies as primary and secondary.’ … ‘Whether these distinctions be well or ill founded, it is not my business to inquire.’ But though he did not deem it his business to inquire into the accuracy of these and similar distinctions, he thought himself justified in assuming them, and reasoning from them as if they could explain the working of those sensations, whose perversion formed the point of contact between metaphysics and pathology. See, for instance, in his Works, vol. i. p. 46, the long series of unproved and improvable assertions respecting the combination and comparison of sensations giving rise to memory, imagination, and the like.