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
the little images of the pictures in B, and consider them by themselves,
and with respect only to one another, they are all erect and in their
natural posture.
117. Farther, there lies a mistake in our imagining that the pictures of
external objects are painted on the bottom of the eye. It hath been shown
there is no resemblance BETWEEN the ideas of sight and things tangible.
It hath likewise been demonstrated that the proper objects of sight do
not exist without the mind. Whence it clearly follows that the pictures
painted on the bottom of the eye are not the pictures of external
objects. Let anyone consult his own thoughts, and then say what affinity,
what likeness there is between that certain variety and disposition of
colours which constitute the visible man, or picture of a man, and that
other combination of far different ideas, sensible by touch, which
compose the tangible man. But if this be the case, how come they to be
accounted pictures or images, since that supposes them to copy or
represent some originals or other?
118. To which I answer: in the forementioned instance the eye A takes the
little images, included within the representation of the other eye B, to
be pictures or copies, whereof the archetypes are not things existing
without, but the larger pictures projected on its own fund: and which by
A are not thought pictures, but the originals, or true things themselves.
Though if we suppose a third eye C from a due distance to behold the fund
of A, then indeed the things projected thereon shall, to C, seem pictures
or images in the same sense that those projected on B do to A.
119. Rightly to conceive this point we must carefully distinguish between
the ideas of sight and touch, between the visible and tangible eye; for
certainly on the tangible eye nothing either is or seems to be painted.
Again, the visible eye, as well as all other visible objects, hath been
shown to exist only in the mind, which perceiving its own ideas, and
comparing them together, calls some PICTURES in respect of others. What
hath been said, being rightly comprehended and laid together, doth, I
think, afford a full and genuine explication of the erect appearance of
objects; which phenomenon, I must confess, I do not see how it can be
explained by any theories of vision hitherto made public.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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