[58] Hettner, Literaiurgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts, ii. 301.
[59] Œuv., ii. 260, etc.
[60] Œuv., ii. 258, 259. De l'Essai sur les Femmes, par Thomas. See Grimm's Corr. Lit., vii. 451, where the book is disparaged; and viii. 1, where Diderot's view of it is given. Thomas (1732-85) belonged to the philosophical party, but not to the militant section of it. He was a serious and orderly person in his life, and enjoyed the closest friendship with Madame Necker. His enthusiasm for virtue, justice, and freedom, expressed with much magniloquence, made him an idol in the respectable circle which Madame Necker gathered round her. He has been justly, though perhaps harshly, described as a "valetudinarian Grandison." (Albert's Lit. Française au 18ième Siècle, p. 423.)
[61] Elémens de la Philosophie de Newton, Pt. II. ch. vii. Berkeley himself only refers once to Cheselden's case: Theory of Vision vindicated, § 71. Professor Fraser, in his important edition of Berkeley's works (i. 444), reproduces from the Philosophical Transactions the original account of the operation, which is unfortunately much less clear and definite than Voltaire's emphasised version would make it, though its purport is distinct enough.
[62] Essai sur l'Origine des Connaissances humaines, I. § 6.
[63] Let. sur les Aveugles, 323, 324. Condorcet attaches a higher value to Cheselden's operation. Œuv., ii. 121.
[64] Dr. M'Cosh (Exam. of J. S. Mill's Philosophy, p. 163) quotes what seems to be the best reported case, by a Dr. Franz, of Leipsic; and Prof. Fraser, in the appendix to Berkeley (loc. cit.), quotes another good case by Mr. Nunnely. See also Mill's Exam. of Hamilton, p. 288 (3d ed.)
[65] Confessions, II, vii.
[66] Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals, c. xiii. p. 312, and also pp. 335-337. This fact, so far as it goes, seems to make against the theory of transmitted sentiments.
[67] Locke answered that the man would not distinguish the cube from the sphere, until he had identified by actual touch the source of his former tactual impression with the object making a given visual impression. Condillac, while making just objections to the terms in which Molyneux propounded the question, answered it different from Locke. Diderot expresses his own opinion thus: "I think that when the eyes of the born-blind are opened for the first time to the light, he will perceive nothing at all; that some time will be necessary for his eye to make experiments for itself; but that it will make these experiments itself, and in its own way, and without the help of touch." This is in harmony with the modern doctrine, that there is an inherited aptitude of structure (in the eye, for instance), but that experience is an essential condition to the development and perfecting of this aptitude.