2.  Few simple Ideas have Names.

I think it will be needless to enumerate all the particular simple ideas belonging to each sense.  Nor indeed is it possible if we would; there being a great many more of them belonging to most of the senses than we have names for.  The variety of smells, which are as many almost, if not more, than species of bodies in the world, do most of them want names.  Sweet and stinking commonly serve our turn for these ideas, which in effect is little more than to call them pleasing or displeasing; though the smell of a rose and violet, both sweet, are certainly very distinct ideas.  Nor are the different tastes, that by our palates we receive ideas of, much better provided with names.  Sweet, bitter, sour, harsh, and salt are almost all the epithets we have to denominate that numberless variety of relishes, which are to be found distinct, not only in almost every sort of creatures, but in the different parts of the same plant, fruit, or animal.  The same may be said of colours and sounds.  I shall, therefore, in the account of simple ideas I am here giving, content myself to set down only such as are most material to our present purpose, or are in themselves less apt to be taken notice of though they are very frequently the ingredients of our complex ideas; amongst which, I think, I may well account solidity, which therefore I shall treat of in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV.

Idea of solidity.

1.  We receive this Idea from Touch.

The idea of solidity we receive by our touch:  and it arises from the resistance which we find in body to the entrance of any other body into the place it possesses, till it has left it.  There is no idea which we receive more constantly from sensation than solidity.  Whether we move or rest, in what posture soever we are, we always feel something under us that supports us, and hinders our further sinking downwards; and the bodies which we daily handle make us perceive that, whilst they remain between them, they do, by an insurmountable force, hinder the approach of the parts of our hands that press them.  That which thus hinders the approach of two bodies, when they are moved one towards another, I call solidity.  I will not dispute whether this acceptation of the word solid be nearer to its original signification than that which mathematicians use it in.  It suffices that I think the common notion of solidity will allow, if not justify, this use of it; but if any one think it better to call it impenetrability, he has my consent.  Only I have thought the term solidity the more proper to express this idea, not only because of its vulgar use in that sense, but also because it carries something more of positive in it than impenetrability; which is negative, and