Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Mind
- 2 Substance, space, labor, and property
- 3 Acquaintance
- 4 Seeing and touching
- 5 Force
- Part III Trope
- Part IV Conclusion
- Appendix
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought
4 - Seeing and touching
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Mind
- 2 Substance, space, labor, and property
- 3 Acquaintance
- 4 Seeing and touching
- 5 Force
- Part III Trope
- Part IV Conclusion
- Appendix
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought
Summary
The Sense of Feeling can indeed give us a Notion of Extention, Shape, and all other Ideas that enter at the Eye, except Colours; but at the same time it is very much streightned and confined in its Operations, to the number, bulk, and distance of its particular Objects. Our Sight seems designed to supply all these Defects, and may be considered as a more delicate and diffusive kind of Touch, that spreads it self over an infinite Multitude of Bodies, comprehends the largest Figures, and brings into our reach some of the most remote Parts of the Universe.
The Spectator, 411Commentary on the Essay frequently identifies the eye as part of the tabula rasa representation of mind (the eye sees what is on the tabula rasa) or as part of an alternative representation of mind. The evidence supporting this view that the eye, in one way or another, models the mind in the Essay is extensive and begins on the first page of Book I: “the Understanding, like the Eye, whilst it makes us see, and perceive all other Things, takes no notice of it self.” (43). References to how men know by “the light of Nature” (75) and how an idea is “agreeable to the common light of Reason” (89) substantiate this analogy between knowing and seeing. So, too, does Locke's insistent claim in the final chapter of Book I that, if an idea is in the mind, it is either in view of the mind or out of its view in memory (96–98).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Locke, Literary Criticism, and Philosophy , pp. 73 - 94Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994