An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2Locke, John
Philosophy
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2
Locke, John
Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
But this modification of distance we call place, being made by men for
their common use, that by it they might be able to design the
particular position of things, where they had occasion for such
designation; men consider and determine of this place by reference to
those adjacent things which best served to their present purpose,
without considering other things which, to another purpose, would
better determine the place of the same thing. Thus in the chess-board,
the use of the designation of the place of each chess-man being
determined only within that chequered piece of wood, it would cross
that purpose to measure it by anything else; but when these very
chess-men are put up in a bag, if any one should ask where the black
king is, it would be proper to determine the place by the part of the
room it was in, and not by the chessboard; there being another use of
designing the place it is now in, than when in play it was on the
chessboard, and so must be determined by other bodies. So if any one
should ask, in what place are the verses which report the story of
Nisus and Euryalus, it would be very improper to determine this place,
by saying, they were in such a part of the earth, or in Bodley’s
library: but the right designation of the place would be by the parts
of Virgil’s works; and the proper answer would be, that these verses
were about the middle of the ninth book of his AEneids, and that they
have been always constantly in the same place ever since Virgil was
printed: which is true, though the book itself hath moved a thousand
times, the use of the idea of place here being, to know in what part of
the book that story is, that so, upon occasion, we may know where to
find it, and have recourse to it for use.
10. Place of the universe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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