9. Place relative to a present purpose.
But this modification of distance we call place, being made by men for their
common use, that by it they might be able to design the particular position of things, where they had occasion for
such designation; men consider and determine of this place by reference to those adjacent things which best
served to their present purpose, without considering other things which, to another purpose, would better
determine the place of the same thing. Thus in the chess-board, the use of the designation of the place of each
chess-man being determined only within that chequered piece of wood, it would cross that purpose to measure it
by anything else; but when these very chess-men are put up in a bag, if any one should ask where the black king
is, it would be proper to determine the place by the part of the room it was in, and not by the chess-board; there
being another use of designing the place it is now in, than when in play it was on the chess-board, and so must be
determined by other bodies. So if any one should ask, in what place are the verses which report the story of Nisus
and Euryalus, it would be very improper to determine this place, by saying, they were in such a part of the earth,
or in Bodley's library: but the right designation of the place would be by the parts of Virgil's works; and the proper
answer would be, that these verses were about the middle of the ninth book of his AEneids, and that they have
been always constantly in the same place ever since Virgil was printed: which is true, though the book itself hath
moved a thousand times, the use of the idea of place here being, to know in what part of the book that story is,
that so, upon occasion, we may know where to find it, and have recourse to it for use.
