8. Place relative to particular bodies.
Thus, a company of chess-men, standing on the same squares of the
chess-board where we left them, we say they are all in the same place, or unmoved, though perhaps the
chess-board hath been in the mean time carried out of one room into another; because we compared them only to
the parts of the chess-board, which keep the same distance one with another. The chess-board, we also say, is in
the same place it was, if it remain in the same part of the cabin, though perhaps the ship which it is in sails all the
while. And the ship is said to be in the same place, supposing it kept the same distance with the parts of the
neighbouring land; though perhaps the earth hath turned round, and so both chess-men, and board, and ship, have
every one changed place, in respect of remoter bodies, which have kept the same distance one with another. But
yet the distance from certain parts of the board being that which determines the place of the chessmen; and the
distance from the fixed parts of the cabin (with which we made the comparison) being that which determined the
place of the chess-board; and the fixed parts of the earth that by which we determined the place of the
ship,--these things may be said to be in the same place in those respects: though their distance from some other
things, which in this matter we did not consider, being varied, they have undoubtedly changed place in that
respect; and we ourselves shall think so, when we have occasion to compare them with those other.
