An Essay Towards a New Theory of VisionBerkeley, George
Philosophy
An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision
Berkeley, George
Vision -- Early works to 1800
63. Moreover, it is not only certain that any idea of sight might not
have been connected with this or that idea of touch, which we now observe
to accompany it: but also that the greater visible magnitudes might have
been connected with, and introduced into our minds lesser tangible
magnitudes and the lesser visible magnitudes greater tangible magnitudes.
Nay, that it actually is so we have daily experience; that object which
makes a strong and large appearance, not seeming near so great as
another, the visible magnitude whereof is much less, but more faint, and
the appearance upper, or which is the same thing painted lower on the
RETINA, which faintness and situation suggest both greater magnitude and
greater distance.
64. From which, and from sect. 57 and 58, it is manifest that as we do
not perceive the magnitudes of objects immediately by sight, so neither
do we perceive them by the mediation of anything which has a necessary
connexion with them. Those ideas that now suggest unto us the various
magnitudes of external objects before we touch them, might possibly have
suggested no such thing: or they might have signified them in a direct
contrary manner: so that the very same ideas, on the perception whereof
we judge an object to be small, might as well have served to make us
conclude it great. Those ideas being in their own nature equally fitted
to bring into our minds the idea of small or great, or no size at all of
outward objects; just as the words of any language are in their own
nature indifferent to signify this or that thing or nothing at all.
65. As we see distance, so we see magnitude. And we see both in the same
way that we see shame or anger in the looks of a man. Those passions are
themselves invisible, they are nevertheless let in by the eye along with
colours and alterations of countenance, which are the immediate object of
vision: and which signify them for no other reason than barely because
they have been observed to accompany them. Without which experience we
should no more have taken blushing for a sign of shame than of gladness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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