Page:A Brief History of Modern Philosophy.djvu/45

things; they are the primary and real attributes of things (primi e reali accidenti). Our disposition to regard taste, smell, color, heat, etc., as the absolute attributes of things, on the other hand, is due to sense-prejudice. We give these names to things when they furnish the occasion of certain sensations, but these sensations take place within our bodies. They do not inhere in things. They would vanish if the corpo sensitivo were to vanish.—This doctrine, which contains the principle of the mechanical conception of nature, acquired vast importance in the investigations into the theory of knowledge in the following period.