157. I must confess men are tempted to think that flat or plane figures
are immediate objects of sight, though they acknowledge solids are not.
And this opinion is grounded on what is observed in painting, wherein (it
seems) the ideas immediately imprinted on the mind are only of planes
variously coloured, which by a sudden act of the judgment are changed
into solids. But with a little attention we shall find the planes here
mentioned as the immediate objects of sight are not visible but tangible
planes. For when we say that pictures are planes, we mean thereby that
they appear to the touch smooth and uniform. But then this smoothness and
uniformity, or, in other words, this planeness of the picture, is not
perceived immediately by vision: for it appeareth to the eye various and
multiform.
158. From all which we may conclude that planes are no more the immediate
object of sight than solids. What we strictly see are not solids, nor yet
planes variously coloured: they are only diversity of colours. And some
of these suggest to the mind solids, and other plane figures, just as
they have been experienced to be connected with the one or the other: so
that we see planes in the same way that we see solids, both being equally
suggested by the immediate objects of sight, which accordingly are
themselves denominated planes and solids.
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