Edellinen sivu (Saunderson)
Seuraava
sivu (Addition) It
was Mr. Molineux who proposed the first this question, and which tried to solve
it. It pronounced that the blind man would not distinguish the sphere from the
cube ; " because, he says, though it learned by experiment how
the sphere and the cube affect its contact, it however does not know yet only
what affects its contact of such or such manner, must strike its eyes of such or
such way ; nor that the advanced angle of the cube which presses its hand
in an unequal way must appear in its eyes such as it appears in the cube. "Locke,
consulted on this question, said : " I am completely feeling of
Mr. Molineux. I believe that the blind man would not be able, in the first sight,
to ensure with some confidence which would be the cube and which would be the
sphere, if it were satisfied to look at them, though in concerning it could
surely name them and distinguish them by the difference in their figures, that
the contact would make him recognize. "
Mr.
the abbot of Condillac, of which you read L' Test on the origin of human
knowledge with so much of pleasure and utility, and of which I send to you,
with this letter, excel it Traité systems, has a particular feeling on
top. It is useless to bring back the reasons to you on which it is based ;
it would be you to envy the pleasure of reading again a work where they are
exposed in a way so pleasant and so philosophical, which on my side I would risk
too much to move them. I will be satisfied to observe that they very tend to
show that theborn one does not see anything, or that it sees the different
sphere and the cube ; and that the conditions that these two bodies are of
the same metal and about of the same size, that one judged in connection with
inserting in the statement of the question, there are superfluous, which cannot
be disputed ; because, it could have said, if there is no essential
connection between the feeling of the sight and that of the touch, like MISTERS
Locke and Molineux claim it, they must be appropriate that one could see two
feet in diameter to a body which disappears under the hand. Mr. de Condillac
adds however that if theborn one sees the bodies, distinguishes the figures of
them, and that it hesitates over the judgement that it must about it carry, it
can be only by reasons rather subtle metaphysics that I will explain you
presently.
Here
are thus two different feelings on the same question, and between philosophers
of the first force. It would seem that after being handled by people such as
MISTERS Molineux, Locke and the abbot of Condillac, it should nothing any more
leave with saying ; but there are so many faces under which the same thing
can be considered, which it would not be astonishing that they all had not
exhausted them.
Those
which pronounced that theborn one would distinguish the cube from the sphere
started by supposing a fact that it was perhaps important to examine ; to
know if blind man-born, with which one would cut down the cataracts, would be in
a position to be useful itself of its eyes in the first moments which succeed
the operation. They only said : " theborn one, comparing
the ideas of sphere and cube which it received by the touch with those that it
takes by the sight, will necessarily know that they are the same ones ; and
there would be in him well bizarrery to pronounce that it is the cube which
gives him, with the sight, the idea of sphere and which it is sphere which the
idea comes to him from the cube. It will thus call sphere and cubic, with the
sight, which it called sphere and cubic with the touch. "But which was
the response and the reasoning of their antagonists ? They supposed
pareillement that theborn one would see at once that it would have the healthy
body ; they imagined that it was of an eye to which one lowers the cataract
like an arm which ceases being paralytic : exercise is not needed, with
this one to feel, have they says, nor consequently with the other to see ;
and they added : " Let us grant to blind man-born a little more
philosophy than you do not give any him, and after having pushed the reasoning
until where you left it, it will continue : but however, which ensured me
that while approaching these bodies and by applying my hands to them they will
not mislead my waiting suddenly, and that the cube will not return me the
feeling of the sphere, and the sphere that of the cube ? There is only
experience which can learn if there is conformity of relation between the sight
and the touch : these two directions could be in contradiction in their
reports/ratios, without I knowing anything of it ; perhaps even I would
believe that what is currently presented at my sight is only one pure appearance,
if me had not been informed that they are the same bodies there that I touched.
This one seems to me, with the truth, duty being the body which I called cubic ;
and that one the body which I called sphere ; but one does not ask me what
it seems to to me about it, but what in is ; and I am by no means in a
position to satisfy this last question. "
This reasoning, known as the author ofthe Test on the origin of human
knowledge, would
be very embarrassing for theborn one ; and I see only the experiment which
can provide an answer to it. There is any appearance that Mr. the abbot of
Condillac wants to speak here only about the experiment that theborn one réitérerait
itself on the bodies by a second contact. You will smell presently why I make
this remark. With the remainder, this skilful metaphysician could have added
that blind man-born was to find of as much less nonsense to suppose than two
directions could be in contradiction, than it imagines that a mirror puts at it
indeed, as I noticed higher.
Mr.
de Condillac observes then that Mr. Molineux embarrassed the question of several
conditions which can neither prevent nor to overcome the difficulties which
metaphysics would form with theborn one. This observation is all the more right,
that the metaphysics which one supposes with blind man-born is not moved ;
since, in these philosophical questions, the experiment must always be supposed
to be done on a philosopher, i.e. on a person who seizes, in the questions that
one proposes to him, all that the reasoning and the condition of its bodies
enable him to see there.
Here
is, Madam, in summary, which one said for and counters on this question ;
and you will see, by the examination that I will make of it, how much those
which announced that theborn one would see the figures and would distinguish the
bodies, were far from realizing that they were right ; and how much those
which denied it had reasons to think that they N were not wrong.
The
question of blind man-born, taken a little more generally than Mr. Molineux
proposed it, embraces two others of them that we will consider separately. One
can ask : if theborn one will see at once that the operation of the
cataract will be made ; in the case which it sees, if it will see
sufficiently to distinguish the figures ; if it will be in a position to
surely apply to them, them seeing, the same names that it gave them with the
touch ; and if it will have the demonstration which these names are
appropriate to them.
Theborn
one will it see immediately after the cure of the body ? Those which claim
that it will not see, say : " At once that theborn one enjoys
faculty to be useful of its eyes, all the scene which it has in prospect comes
to be painted in the content of its eye. This image, made up of an infinity of
objects gathered in a small fort spaces, is only one confused cluster of figures
which it will not be in a position to distinguish the ones from the others. One
agrees almost that there is only experience which can learn how to him to judge
distance from the objects, and which it is even in the need for approaching some,
to touch them, to move away, of to approach, and to touch them still, to make
sure that they do not form part of itself, that they are foreign with his being,
and that he of it is sometimes close and sometimes distant : why the
experiment be wouldn't yet necessary for him to see them ? Without the
experiment, that which sees objects for the first time should think, when they
move away from him, or him of them, beyond the range of its sight, that they
ceased existing ; because there is only experience which we make on the
permanent objects, and which we find in the same place where we them left which
notes us their existence continued in the distance. It is perhaps by this reason
which the children comfort so promptly toys of which one deprives them. One
cannot say that they forget them promptly : because if it is considered
that there are some two year old children and half who know a considerable part
of the words of a language, and whom it costs some to them more to pronounce
them that to retain them, one will be convinced that the time of childhood is
that of the memory. Wouldn't it be more natural to suppose than then the
children think than than they cease seeing ceased existing, more especially as
their joy appears interfered admiration, when the objects which they lost sight
of the fact have suddenly reappeared ? The nurses help them to acquire the
notion of the beings absent, by exerting them with a small play which consists
in being covered and to show the face suddenly. They have, in this manner,
hundred times in fifteen minutes, the experiment that what ceases appearing does
not cease existing. From where it follows that it is with the experiment that we
owe the notion of the continued existence of the objects ; that it is by
the touch that we acquire that of their distance ; perhaps that it is
necessary that the eye learns how to see, like the language with speaking ;
that it would be not astonishing that help of one of direction was necessary to
different, and that touch, which ensures us of the existence of the objects out
of us when they are present at our eyes, is perhaps still the direction with
which it is reserved to note us, I do not say their figures and other
modifications, but even their presence. "
One
adds to this reasoning the famous experiments of Cheselden. The young man to
whom this skilful surgeon lowered the cataracts distinguished, for a long time,
neither sizes, neither distances, neither situations, nor same figures. An
object of an inch put in front of its eye, and which hid a house to him,
appeared as large to him as the house. It had all the objects on the eyes ;
and they seemed to him applied to this body, as the objects of tact are it with
my skin. It could not distinguish what it had considered to be round, using its
hands, of with what it had considered to be angular ; nor to distinguish
with the eyes if what it had felt to be in top or bottom, was indeed in top or
bottom. It arrived, but it was not without sorrow, to see that its house was
larger than its room, but by no means to design how the eye could give him this
idea. It needed a great number of experiments reiterated to make sure that
painting represented solid bodies : and when it had been well convinced, by
to look at tables, that they were not surfaces only that it saw, it carried the
hand there, and was well astonished to meet only one plain plan and without any
projection : it asked then which was the misleading one, of the direction
of the touch or the direction of the sight. With the remainder, painting made
the same effect on the savages, the first time that they transfer some :
they took figures painted for alive men, questioned them, and were very
surprised to receive any answer from it : this error did not certainly come
in them from little usually to see.
But,
that to answer the other difficulties ? that indeed, the tested eye of a
man shows better the objects, that the idiotic body and very nine of a child or
a blind man of birth to which one has just lowered the cataracts. See, Madam,
all the evidence that to Mr. the abbot of Condillac gives some, at the end of
his Test on the origin of human knowledge, where it proposes in
objection the experiments made by Cheselden, and brought back by Mr. de Voltaire.
Effects of the light on an eye which in is affected for the first time, and the
requirements in moods of this body the cornea, crystalline lens etc..., are
exposed there with much clearness and force, and hardly allow to doubt that the
vision is not done very imperfectly in a child which opens the eyes for the
first time, or in a blind man with whom one has just made the operation.
It
thus should be been appropriate that we must see in the objects an infinity of
things that the child nor theborn one do not see there, though they are also
combed at the bottom of their eyes ; that it is not enough that the objects
strike us, that it is necessary still that we are attentive with their
impressions ; that, consequently, one sees nothing the first time that one
is useful oneself of his eyes ; that one is not affected, in the first
moments of the vision, that of a multitude of confused feelings which manage
only with time and by the usual reflexion on what occurs in us ; that it is
the experiment alone which learns how to us to compare the feelings with what
causes ; that the feelings not having anything which resembles the objects
primarily, it is with the experiment to inform us on analogies which seem to be
of pure institution : in a word, one can doubt only to touch it serf to
make known much to the eye precise of the conformity of the object with the
representation that it receives some ; and I think that, if all were not
carried out in nature by infinitely general laws ; if, for example, the
puncture of certain hard bodies were painful, and that of other bodies
accompanied by pleasure, we would die without to have collected the hundred
millionth part of the experiments necessary to the conservation of our body and
our wellbeing.
However
I think by no means that the eye cannot be informed, or, if it is allowed to
speak thus, to try out itself. To ensure itself, by the touch, of the existence
and the figure of the objects, it is not necessary to see ; why would it be
necessary to touch, for, to be ensured of the same things by the sight ? I
know all the advantages of tact ; and I did not disguise them, when it was
question of Saunderson or the blind man of Puisaux ; but I did not
recognize that one to him. One conceives without sorrow that the use of one of
the directions can be improved and accelerated by the observations of the other ;
but by no means that there is between their functions an essential dependence.
There is undoubtedly in the bodies of qualities that us would never see there
without the contact : it is the tact which informs us of the presence of
certain modifications insensitive with the eyes, which see them only when they
were informed by this direction ; but these services are reciprocal ;
and in those which have the sight finer than the touch, it is the first of these
directions which informs the other of the existence of objects and of
modifications which would escape to him by their smallness. If one placed you
without your knowledge, between the inch and the index, a paper or some other
linked substance, thin and flexible, there would be only your eye which could
inform you that the contact of these fingers would not be done immediately. I
will observe, while passing, who it would be infinitely more difficult to
mislead a blind man on top than a person who is accustomed to seeing.
An
alive and animated eye would have undoubtedly sorrow to make sure that the
external objects do not form part of itself ; that it of it is sometimes
close, sometimes distant ; that they are illustrated ; that they are
larger the ones than the others ; that they have depth, etc, but I by no
means doubt that it did not see them, with long, and that it did not see them
sufficiently distinctly to distinguish at least the coarse limits of them. To
deny, it would be to lose sight of the fact the destination of the bodies ;
it would be to forget the principal phenomena of the vision ; it would be
to be dissimulated which there are enough skilful painter to approach the beauty
and exactitude of the miniatures which are combed in the content of our eyes ;
that there are nothing more precise than the resemblance representation to the
object represented ; that the fabric of this table is not so small ;
that there is not null confusion between the figures ; that they occupy
about an half-inch in square ; and that nothing is more difficult besides
than to explain how the touch would begin there to teach with the eye to see, if
the use of this last body were absolutely impossible without the help of the
first.
But
I will not stick to simple presumptions ; and I will ask whether it is the
touch which learns how with the eye to distinguish the colors. I do not think
that one grants to tact such an extraordinary privilege : that supposed, it
follows that, if one presents at a blind man with who one has just restored the
sight a black cube, with a red sphere, on a great white zone, he is not long in
distinguishing the limits of these figures.
It
will delay, could one answer me all the time, necessary to moods of the eye, to
lay out itself suitably : with the cornea, to take necessary convexity with
the vision ; with my pupil, to be likely dilation and contracting which are
clean for him ; with the nets of the retina, not to be neither too nor too
not very sensitive to the action of the light ; with the crystalline lens,
to be exerted with the movements ahead and behind that one suspects to him ;
or with the muscles, for fulfilling their functions well ; with the optic
nerves, to accustom itself to transmit the feeling ; with the whole sphere
of the eye, to lend itself to all the provisions necessary, and all the parts
which make it up, to contribute to the execution of this miniature from which
one draws so good party, when it is a question of showing that the eye will try
out itself.
I
acknowledge that, some simple that that is to say the table which I have just
presented at the eye of blind man-born, it will distinguish the parts well from
them only when the body meets all the preceding conditions ; but it is
perhaps work the one moment ; and it would not be difficult, by applying
the reasoning which one has just objected to me to a a little made up machine,
with a watch, for example, to show, by the detail of all the movements which
occur in the drum, the rocket, the wheels, the pallets, the beam, etc, that one
will need fifteen days for the needle to traverse the one second space. If it is
answered that these movements are simultaneous, I will retort that it is perhaps
the same those which occur in the eye, when it opens for the first time, and
from the majority of the judgements which are done consequently. At all events
of these conditions which one requires in the eye to be clean with the vision,
it should be been appropriate that it is not the touch which gives them to him,
that this body acquires them of itself ; and that, consequently, it will
manage to distinguish the figures which will be painted there, without the help
from another direction.
But
once again, will one say, when will be it there ? Perhaps much more
promptly than one does not think. When we went to visit the cabinet of the Royal
Garden together, do you remember, Madam, of the experiment of the concave mirror,
and of the fright which you eûtes when you saw coming to you the point from a
sword with the same speed as the point of that which you had with the hand
advanced towards the surface of the mirror ? However you were accustomed to
reporting beyond the mirrors all the objects which are combed there. The
experiment is thus neither if necessary, nor even if if infallible that it it is
thought, to see the objects or their images where they are. There is not to your
parrot which did not provide me a proof of it. The first time that it is lived
in an ice, it approached its nozzle it, and not meeting itself which it took for
its similar, it made it tower of the ice. I do not want to give to the testimony
of the parrot more force than it does not have any ; but it is an animal
experiment where the prejudice cannot have of share.
However,
me was ensured that blind man-born did not distinguish anything for two months,
I would not be astonished by it. I will conclude from it only the need from the
experiment of the body, but by no means the need for the contact to try out it.
I will only include/understand any better how much it is important to let remain
some time blind man-born in the darkness, when one intends it for observations ;
to give in its eyes freedom to be exerted, which it will more conveniently do in
darkness than at the great day ; and to grant to him, in the experiments,
only one species of twilight, or to spare themselves, at least in the place
where they will be done, the advantage of increasing or of decreasing with
discretion clearness. One will find me only more been willing to agree that
these kinds of experiments will be always very difficult and very dubious ;
and that shortest indeed, though seemingly longest, it is to secure the subject
of philosophical knowledge which make it able to compare the two conditions by
which it passed, and to inform us of the difference of the state of a blind man
and of that of a man who sees. Once again, that can one await from precis of
that which is not any accustomed to reflecting and to return on itself ;
and which, like the blind man of Cheselden, is unaware of the advantages of the
sight, at the point to be insensitive to its disgrace, and not to imagine that
the loss of this direction harms its pleasures much ? Saunderson, with
which one will not refuse the title of philosopher, did not certainly have the
same indifference ; and I doubt extremely that it had been of the opinion
of the author of excellent Traité on the Systems. I would suspect
readily the last of these philosophers of having given itself in a small system,
when it claimed that, if the life of the man had been only one not stopped
feeling of pleasure or pain, happy in a case without any idea of misfortune,
unhappy in the other without any idea of happiness, it had enjoyed or suffered ;
and that, as if such had been its nature, it had not looked around him to
discover if some being took care of its conservation, or worked to harm to him ;
that it is the altematif passage of the one with the other of these states,
which made it reflect, etc... "
Do
you believe, Madam, that while going down from clear perceptions in clear
perceptions (because it is the manner of philosophizing of the author, and the
maid), it had ever arrived to this conclusion ? It is not happiness and
misfortune as well as darkness and light : one does not consist in a pure
and simple deprivation of the other. Perhaps we had ensured that happiness was
less essential to us than the existence and the thought, if we had enjoyed it
without any deterioration ; but I cannot about it say as much misfortune.
It had been very natural to look it like a forced state, to feel innocent, to
however believe themselves guilty, and to show or excuse nature, just like one
makes.
Does
Mr. the abbot of Condillac think that a child does not complain when it suffers,
that because it did not suffer without slackening since it is in the world ?
If it answers me " that to exist and suffer it would be the same thing
for that which would have always suffered ; and that it would not imagine
that one could suspend his pain without perhaps destroying his existence
", will retort to him I, the unhappy man without interruption had not said :
What did I make, to suffer ? but which had prevented it from saying :
What did I make, to exist ? However I do not see why it had not had the two
synonymous verbs, I exist and I suffer, one for prose, and the
other for poetry, as we have the two expressions, I live and I breathe. With
the remainder, you will notice better than me, Madam, than
this place of Mr. the abbot of Condillac is written very perfectly ; and I
fear well that you do not say, by comparing my criticism with his reflexion,
that you like better still an error of Montaigne that a truth of Cartwright.
And
always of the variations, you will say to me. Yes, Madam, it is the condition of
our treaty. Here now my opinion on the two preceding questions. I think that the
first time that the eyes of blind man-born will open with the light, it will not
see anything the whole ; that it will take some time in its eye to be
tested : but that it will try out itself, and without the help of the touch ;
and that it will not only manage to distinguish the colors, but to distinguish
at least the coarse limits of the objects. Let us see now if, in the assumption
which it acquired this aptitude in an extremely short time, or which it obtained
it by agitating its eyes in darkness where one would have had the attention to
lock up it and to exhort it with this exercise during some time after the
operation and before the experiments ; let us see, say I, if it recognizes
with the sight the bodies that it would have touched, and if it would be in a
position to give them the names which are appropriate to them. It is the last
question which remains me to be solved.
For
me to discharge some in a manner which you like, since you the method, I like
will distinguish several kinds of people, on whom the experiments can be tried.
If they are coarse people, without educations, knowledge, and not prepared, I
think that, when the operation of the cataract destroys the vice one of the body
perfectly, and that the eye will be healthy, the objects are painted there very
distinctly ; but that, these people being accustomed to no kind of
reasoning, knowing what it is only feeling, idea ; not being in a position
to compare the representations which they received by the touch with those which
come to them by the eyes, they will pronounce : Here is a round, here is a
square, without there being basic to make on their judgement ; or even they
will agree ingenuously that they do not see anything in the objects which are
presented at their sight which resembles so that they touched.
There
are other people who, comparing the figures which they will see with the bodies
with those which made impression on their hands, and applying by the thought
their contact to these bodies which are remote, will say one that it is a
square, and other that it is a circle, but without knowing too much why ;
the comparison of the ideas that they took by the touch with those which they
receive by the sight, not being made in them rather distinctly to convince them
of the truth of their judgement.
I
will pass, Madam, without digression, with a metaphysician on whom one would try
the experiment. I by no means doubt that this one did not reason as of the
moment when it would start to see the objects distinctly, as if it had seen them
all its life ; and that after having compared the ideas which come to him
by the eyes with those that it took by the touch, it did not say, with the same
insurance as you and me : " I would be extremely tempted to
believe that it is this body which I always named circle, and that it is this
one that I always called square but I will take care well not to pronounce that
that is thus. Who revealed me that, if I approached some, they would not
disappear under my hands ? What do I know if the objects of my sight are
intended to be also the objects of my contact ?
I
am unaware of if what is visible for me is palpable ; but when I would not
be in this uncertainty, and that I would believe on the word of the people who
surround me, that what I see is really what I touched, I would hardly be more
advanced. These objects could extremely well change in my hands, and return me,
by tact, of the very contrary feelings to those which I test by the sight. Dear
Sirs, would add it, this body seems to me the square, this one, the circle ;
but I do not have any science which they are such with the touch but the sight. "
If
we substitute a geometrician for the metaphysician, Saunderson with Locke, it
will say like him that, if it believes of them his eyes, of the two figures
which it sees, it is that one that it called square, and this one which it
called circle : " because I realize, would add it, whom there is
only the first where I can arrange wire and place the pins at large head, which
marked the angular points of the square ; and that only the second ago to
which I can register or circumscribe the wire which were necessary for me to
show the properties of the circle. Here is thus a circle ! here is thus a
square ! But, it would have continued with Locke, perhaps that, when I
apply my hands to these figures, they will transform one into the other, so that
the same figure could be used to me to show with the blind men the properties of
the circle, and with those which see, properties of the square. Perhaps that I
would see a square, and that at the same time I would feel a circle. Not, it
would have begun again ; I am mistaken. Those with which I showed the
properties of the circle and the square did not have the hands on my abacus and
did not touch the wire which I had tightened and which limited my figures ;
however they included/understood me. They thus did not see a square when I felt
a circle ; without what we had never gotten along ; I had traced a
figure to them, and had shown the properties of another ; I had given them
a straight line for an arc of circle, and an arc of circle for a straight line.
But since they all heard me, all the men thus see the ones like the others :
I thus see square what they saw square, and circular what they saw circular.
Thus here are what I always named square, and here are what I always named
circle. "
I
substituted the circle for the sphere, and the square with the cube because
there is any appearance which we judge of the distances only by the experiment ;
and consequently, that that which is useful of its eyes for the first time sees
only surfaces, and which it does not know what it is only covered ; the
projection of one body to the sight consisting of what some of its points appear
closer to us than the others.
But
when theborn one would judge, as of the first time that it sees, of the
projection and the solidity of the bodies, and that it would be in a position to
distinguish, not only the circle of the square, but also the sphere of the cube,
I do not believe for that that it was the same for any other made up object.
There is appearance well that theborn one of Mr. de Réaumur distinguished the
colors the ones of the others but there are thirty to bet against one which it
randomly pronounced on the sphere and the cube ; and I hold for some, that
with less than one revelation, it was not possible to him to recognize its
gloves, its dressing gown and its shoe. These objects are in charge of a so
great number of modifications ; there is if few relationship between their
total form and that of the members whom they are intended to decorate or has to
cover that it had been a problem hundred times more embarrassing for Saunderson,
to determine, that to find the use of his tables.
Saunderson
had failed to suppose only it reigns a geometrical relationship between the
things and their use ; and consequently it had seen into two or three
analogies, that its cap was made for its head : there is no arbitrary form
which tended to mislay it. But what had it thought of the angles and the bunch
of its doctor's cap ? What good is this tuft ? why rather four angles
that six ? it had wondered ; and these two modifications, which are
for us a business of ornament, would have been for him the source of a crowd of
absurd reasoning, or rather the occasion of an excellent satire of what we call
the good taste.
By
weighing the things maturely, one will acknowledge that the difference that
there is between a person who always saw, but with which it use of an object is
unknown, and that which knows the use of an object, but which never saw, is not
with the advantage of this one : however, do you believe, Madam, that if
one showed you today, for the first time, a trimming, you arrived, never to
guess that it is an adjustment, and that it is an adjustment of head ? But,
if it is all the more difficult with blind man-born, which sees for the first
time, well to judge objects according to whether they have a greater number of
forms, which would prevent it from taking an observer very equipped and
motionless in an armchair placed in front of him for a piece of furniture or a
machine, and a tree whose air would agitate the sheets and the branches, for a
being being driven, animated and thinking ? Madam, how much our directions
suggest us of things ; and that we would have of sorrow, without our eyes,
to suppose that a block of marble does not think nor does not feel !
There
thus remains for shown, which Saunderson would have been assured that he was not
mistaken in the judgement which he had just carried of the circle and the square
only ; and that there are cases where the reasoning and the experiment of
the others can clarify the sight on the relation of the touch, and to inform it
that what is such for the eye, is such also for tact.
It
would however not be less essential, when one would propose the demonstration of
some proposal for an eternal truth, as it calls them, to test its demonstration,
by depriving it of the testimony of the directions ; because you see well,
Madam, that, if somebody claimed to prove to you that the projection of two
parallel lines on a table must be done by two convergent lines, because two
alleys appeared such, it would forget that the proposal is true for a blind man
as for him.
But
the preceding assumption of blind man-born suggests two others of them, one of a
man who would have seen as of his birth, and which would not have had the
direction of the touch, and the other of a man in which feel it sight and touch
would be perpetually in contradiction. One could ask for first if, restoring the
direction to him which it misses, and removing to him the direction of the sight
by a stringcourse, it recognizes the bodies with the touch. It is obvious that
the geometry, in case which it was informed, would provide him an infallible
means to be ensured if testimonys of the two directions are contradictory or not.
It would have only to take the cube or the sphere between its hands, to show
with somebody the properties, and to pronounce of them, if it is included/understood,
that one sees cubic what it feels cubic, and which it is consequently the cube
that it holds. As for that which would be unaware of this science, I think that
it would not be easier to him to distinguish, by the touch, the cube of the
sphere, that with the blind man of Mr. Molineux to distinguish them by the sight.
With
regard to that in which them feelings of the sight and touch would be
perpetually contradictory, I do not know what it would think of the forms, the
order, symmetry, the beauty, of the ugliness, etc... According to any appearance,
it would be, compared to these things, which we are relative with wide and at
the duration real of the beings. It would pronounce, in general, that a body has
a form ; but it should have the leaning one to believe that it is neither
that which it sees nor that that it feels.
Such
a man could be dissatisfied with his directions well ; but its directions
would be neither content nor dissatisfied with the objects. If it were tempted
to show one of falseness of them, I believe that it would be with the touch that
it would be caught some. Hundred circumstances would incline it to think that
the figure of the objects changes rather by the action of its hands on them,
that by that of the objects on its eyes. But in consequence of these prejudices,
the difference of hardness and mollesse, which it would observe in the bodies,
would be strong embarrassing for him.
But
the EC what our directions are not in contradiction on the forms, does it follow
that they are better known for us ? Who said to us that we do not have
business with false witnesses ? We however judge. Alas ! Madam, when
one put human knowledge in the balance of Montaigne, one is not distant to take
her currency. Because, that do we know ? is what it that the matter ?
by no means ; is what it that the spirit and the thought ? even less ;
is what it that the movement, space and the duration ? not whole ;
geometrical truths ? Question mathematicians in good faith, and they will
acknowledge you that their proposals all are identical, and that as well volumes
on the circle, for example, is reduced to repeat us in a hundred and thousand
different ways as it is a figure where all the lines drawn from the center to
the circumference are equal. We thus do not know almost anything ; however,
how much writings whose authors have all claimed to know something ! I do
not guess why the world is not bored lira and anything to learn, unless it is by
the same reason as it has been two hours that I have the honor to maintain you,
without me to annoy and you nothing to say.
I
am with a deep respect, Madam
Your
very humble and very obeying servant,