 | Chapter XIII
Complex Ideas of Simple Modes:--and First, of the Simple Modes of the Idea of
Space An essay concerning human understanding |  |
10. Place of the universe.
That our idea of place is nothing else but such a relative position of anything as I have before mentioned, I think is plain, and will be easily admitted, when we consider that we can have no idea of the place of the universe, though we can of all the parts of it; because beyond that we have not the idea of any fixed, distinct, particular beings, in reference to which we can imagine it to have any relation of distance; but all beyond it is one uniform space or expansion, wherein the mind finds no variety, no marks. For to say that the world is somewhere, means no more than that it does exist; this, though a phrase borrowed from place, signifying only its existence, not location: and when one can find out, and frame in his mind, clearly and distinctly, the place of the universe, he will be able to tell us whether it moves or stands still in the undistinguishable inane of infinite space: though it be true that the word place has sometimes a more confused sense, and stands for that space which anybody takes up; and so the universe is in a place.
The idea, therefore, of place we have by the same means that we get the idea of space, (whereof this is but a particular limited consideration,) viz, by our sight and touch; by either of which we receive into our minds the ideas of extension or distance.
| Chapter XIII
Complex Ideas of Simple Modes:--and First, of the Simple Modes of the Idea of
Space An essay concerning human understanding | |