For it seems to me that it
is mind alone, and not mind and body in conjunction, that is
requisite to a knowledge of the truth in regard to such
things. Thus, although a star makes no larger an impression
on my eye than the flame of a little candle there is yet in me
no real or positive propensity impelling me to believe that it
is not greater than that flame; but I have judged it to be so
from my earliest years, without any rational foundation. And
although in approaching fire I feel heat, and in approaching
it a little too near I even feel pain, there is at the same
time no reason in this which could persuade me that there is
in the fire something resembling this heat any more than there
is in it something resembling the pain; all that I have any
reason to believe from this is, that there is something in it,
whatever it may be, which excites in me these sensations of
heat or of pain. So also, although there are spaces in which
I find nothing which excites my senses, I must not from that
conclude that these spaces contain no body; for I see in this,
as in other similar things, that I have been in the habit of
perverting the order of nature, because these perceptions of
sense having bee placed within me by nature merely for the
purpose of signifying to my mind what things are beneficial or
hurtful to the composite whole of which it forms a part, and
being up to that point sufficiently clear and distinct, I yet
avail myself of them as though they were absolute rules by
which I might immediately determine the essence of the bodies
which are outside me, as to which, in fact, they can teach me
nothing but what is most obscure and confused.
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