Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/236

160 all which are but so many different simple modes of space.

The same that it can do with straight lines it can also do with crooked, or crooked and straight together; and the same it can do in lines it can also in superficies: by which we may be led into farther thoughts of the endless variety of figures that the mind has a power to make, and thereby to multiply the simple modes of space.

§ 7. Another idea coming under this head, and belonging to this tribe, is that we call place. As in simple space we consider the relation of distance between any two bodies or points; so in our idea of place we consider the relation of distance betwixt any thing and any two or more points, which are considered as keeping the same distance one with another, and so considered as at rest: for when we find any thing at the same distance now which it was yesterday, from any two or more points, which have not since changed their distance one with another, and with which we then compared it, we say it hath kept the same place; but if it hath sensibly altered its distance with either of those points, we say it hath changed its place: though vulgarly speaking, in the common notion of place, we do not always exactly observe the distance from these precise points, but from larger portions of sensible objects, to which we consider the thing placed to bear relation, and its distance from which we have some reason to observe.

§ 8. Thus a company of chess-men standing on the same squares of the chess-board where we left them, we say they are all in the same place, or unmoved; though perhaps the chess-board hath been in the mean time carried out of one room into another; because we compared them only to the parts of the chess-board which keep the same distance one with another. The chess-board, we also say, is in the same place it was, if it remain in the same part of the cabin, though perhaps the ship which it is in sails all the while: and