He took sensations to be modifications of the mind's being.
And unlike Reid, he insisted that colours are unequivocally both modifications of the mind's being and literally extended.
are not in bodies — which again are to be conceived in terms of geometrical extension alone — but are modifications of the mind.
Second, Malebranche took from Descartes the view that colors and the other so-called 'secondary qualities' are not qualities of bodies but sensations or modifications of the mind (whether Descartes actually held this position himself is controversial).
Emotions, like beliefs and desires, can exist either as occurrent events (jealousy of a rival at a party) or as persisting modifications of the mind (a tendency to feel jealousy).
Indeed, although sensations and other such modifications of the mind are typically strong and lively in their affects, they are 'confused modalities…full of darkness' (Dialogue 3, OC 12 65; JS 33).
The belief systems of early societies are thus characterized by "poetic metaphysics" which "seeks its proofs not in the external world but within the modifications of the mind of him who meditates it" ("Poetic Wisdom," §374, p.116), and "poetic logic," through which the creations of this metaphysics are signified.
There he argues that the same reasons that led the Cartesians to assert that sensory qualities such as colors, heat, cold and smells are not in the objects of the senses, but instead are modifications of the mind, in fact show that all qualities have this status.
I. K. Taimni translates it as "Yoga is the inhibition of the modifications of the mind ".
More specifically, an "affection or passion" refer to "those Modifications or Actions of the mind consequent on the Apprehension of certain Objects or Events in which the Mind generally conceives Good or Evil" (Essay 15).
