experience, which one in those circumstances could not yet have attained
to.

42. It is indeed otherwise upon the common supposition that men judge of
distance by the angle of the optic axes, just as one in the dark, or a
blind-man by the angle comprehended by two sticks, one whereof he held in
each hand. For if this were true, it would follow that one blind from his
birth being made to see, should stand in need of no new experience in
order to perceive distance by sight. But that this is false has, I think,
been sufficiently demonstrated.

43. And perhaps upon a strict inquiry we shall not find that even those
who from their birth have grown up in a continued habit of seeing are
irrecoverably prejudiced on the other side, to wit, in thinking what they
see to be at a distance from them. For at this time it seems agreed on
all hands, by those who have had any thoughts of that matter, that
colours, which are the proper and immediate object of sight, are not
without the mind. But then it will be said, by sight we have also the
ideas of extension, and figure, and motion; all which may well be thought
without, and at some distance from the mind, though colour should not. In
answer to this I appeal to any man's experience, whether the visible
extension of any object doth not appear as near to him as the colour of
that object; nay, whether they do not both seem to be in the very same
place. Is not the extension we see coloured, and is it possible for us,
so much as in thought, to separate and abstract colour from extension?
Now, where the extension is there surely is the figure, and there the
motion too. I speak of those which are perceived by sight.

44. But for a fuller explication of this point, and to show that the
immediate objects of sight are not so much as the ideas or resemblances