As long as the same angle determines the minimum visibile to two persons, no different conformation of the eye can make a different appearance of magnitude in the same thing. But, it being possible to try the angle, we may certainly know whether the same thing appears differently big to two persons on account of their eyes.
If a man could see ... objects would appear larger to him than to another; hence there is another sort of purely visible magnitude beside the proportion any appearance bears to the visual sphere, viz. its proportion to the M. V.
Were there but one and the same language in the world, and did children speak it naturally as soon as born, and [pg 075] were it not in the power of men to conceal their thoughts or deceive others, but that there were an inseparable connexion between words & thoughts, so yt posito uno, ponitur alterum by the laws of nature; Qu. would not men think they heard thoughts as much as that they see extension[229]?
All our ideas are adæquate: our knowledge of the laws of nature is not perfect & adæquate[230].
M. P.
Men are in the right in judging their simple ideas to be in the things themselves. Certainly heat & colour is as much without the mind as figure, motion, time, &c.
We know many things wch we want words to express. Great things discoverable upon this principle. For want of considering wch divers men have run into sundry mistakes, endeavouring to set forth their knowledge by sounds; wch foundering them, they thought the defect was in their knowledge, while in truth it was in their language.