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
The mind, having got the idea of the length of any part of expansion,
let it be a span, or a pace, or what length you will, CAN, as has been
said, repeat that idea, and so, adding it to the former, enlarge its
idea of length, and make it equal to two spans, or two paces; and so,
as often as it will, till it equals the distance of any parts of the
earth one from another, and increase thus till it amounts to the
distance of the sun or remotest star. By such a progression as this,
setting out from the place where it is, or any other place, it can
proceed and pass beyond all those lengths, and find nothing to stop its
going on, either in or without body. It is true, we can easily in our
thoughts come to the end of SOLID extension; the extremity and bounds
of all body we have no difficulty to arrive at: but when the mind is
there, it finds nothing to hinder its progress into this endless
expansion; of that it can neither find nor conceive any end. Nor let
any one say, that beyond the bounds of body, there is nothing at all;
unless he will confine God within the limits of matter. Solomon, whose
understanding was filled and enlarged with wisdom, seems to have other
thoughts when he says, ‘Heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot
contain thee.’ And he, I think, very much magnifies to himself the
capacity of his own understanding, who persuades himself that he can
extend his thoughts further than God exists, or imagine any expansion
where He is not.
3. Nor Duration by Motion.
Just so is it in duration. The mind having got the idea of any length
of duration, can double, multiply, and enlarge it, not only beyond its
own, but beyond the existence of all corporeal beings, and all the
measures of time, taken from the great bodies of all the world and
their motions. But yet every one easily admits, that, though we make
duration boundless, as certainly it is, we cannot yet extend it beyond
all being. God, every one easily allows, fills eternity; and it is hard
to find a reason why any one should doubt that He likewise fills
immensity. His infinite being is certainly as boundless one way as
another; and methinks it ascribes a little too much to matter to say,
where there is no body, there is nothing.
4. Why Men more easily admit infinite Duration than infinite Expansion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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