Let us inquire into the manner of this. By the application
of his hand to the several parts of a human body he had perceived
different tangible ideas, which being collected into sundry complex ones,
have distinct names annexed to them. Thus one combination of a certain
tangible figure, bulk, and consistency of parts is called the head,
another the hand, a third the foot, and so of the rest: all which complex
ideas could, in his understanding, be made up only of ideas perceivable
by touch. He had also by his touch obtained an idea of earth or ground,
towards which he perceives the parts of his body to have a natural
tendency. Now, by ERECT nothing more being meant than that perpendicular
position of a man wherein his feet are nearest to the earth, if the blind
person by moving his hand over the parts of the man who stands before him
perceives the tangible ideas that compose the head to be farthest from,
and those that compose the feet to be nearest to, that other combination
of tangible ideas which he calls earth, he will denominate that man
erect. But if we suppose him on a sudden to receive his sight, and that
he behold a man standing before him, it is evident in that case he would
neither judge the man he sees to be erect nor inverted; for he never
having known those terms applied to any other save tangible things, or
which existed in the space without him, and what he sees neither being
tangible nor perceived as existing without, he could not know that in
propriety of language they were applicable to it.
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