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 infinite wise Contriver of us, and all things about us, hath fitted
our senses, faculties, and organs, to the conveniences of life, and the
business we have to do here. We are able, by our senses, to know and
distinguish things: and to examine them so far as to apply them to our
uses, and several ways to accommodate the exigences of this life. We
have insight enough into their admirable contrivances and wonderful
effects, to admire and magnify the wisdom, power and goodness of their
Author. Such a knowledge as this which is suited to our present
condition, we want not faculties to attain. But it appears not that God
intended we should have a perfect, clear, and adequate knowledge of
them: that perhaps is not in the comprehension of any finite being. We
are furnished with faculties (dull and weak as they are) to discover
enough in the creatures to lead us to the knowledge of the Creator, and
the knowledge of our duty; and we are fitted well enough with abilities
to provide for the conveniences of living: these are our business in
this world. But were our senses altered, and made much quicker and
acuter, the appearance and outward scheme of things would have quite
another face to us; and, I am apt to think, would be inconsistent with
our being, or at least wellbeing, in the part of the universe which we
inhabit. He that considers how little our constitution is able to bear
a remove into part of this air, not much higher than that we commonly
breathe in, will have reason to be satisfied, that in this globe of
earth allotted for our mansion, the all-wise Architect has suited our
organs, and the bodies that are to affect them, one to another. If our
sense of hearing were but a thousand times quicker than it is, how
would a perpetual noise distract us. And we should in the quietest
retirement be less able to sleep or meditate than in the middle of a
sea-fight. Nay, if that most instructive of our senses, seeing, were in
any man a thousand or a hundred thousand times more acute than it is by
the best microscope, things several millions of times less than the
smallest object of his sight now would then be visible to his naked
eyes, and so he would come nearer to the discovery of the texture and
motion of the minute parts of corporeal things; and in many of them,
probably get ideas of their internal constitutions: but then he would
be in a quite different world from other people: nothing would appear
the same to him and others: the visible ideas of everything would be
different. So that I doubt, whether he and the rest of men could
discourse concerning the objects of sight, or have any communication
about colours, their appearances being so wholly different. And perhaps
such a quickness and tenderness of sight could not endure bright
sunshine, or so much as open daylight; nor take in but a very small
part of any object at once, and that too only at a very near distance.
And if by the help of such MICROSCOPICAL EYES (if I may so call them) a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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