Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/238

162 place are the verses which report the story of Nisus and Euryalus, it would be very improper to determine this place by saying, they were in such a part of the earth, or in Bodley's library: but the right designation of the place would be by the parts of Virgil's works; and the proper answer would be, that these verses were about the middle of the ninth book of his Æneid; and that they have been always constantly in the same place ever since Virgil was printed; which is true, though the book itself hath moved a thousand times; the use of the idea of place here being to know in what part of the book that story is, that so upon occasion we may know where to find it, and have recourse to it for use.

§ 10. That our idea of place is nothing else but such a relative position of any thing, as I have before mentioned, I think is plain, and will be easily admitted, when we consider that we can have no idea of the place of the universe, though we can of all the parts of it; because beyond that we have not the idea of any fixed, distinct, particular beings, in reference to which we can imagine it to have any relation of distance ; but all beyond it is one uniform space or expansion, wherein the mind finds no variety, no marks. For to say that the world is somewhere, means no more than that it does exist: this, though a phrase borrowed from place, signifying only its existence, not location; and when one can find out and frame in his mind, clearly and distinctly, the place of the universe, he will be able to tell us whether it moves or stands still in the undistinguishable inane of infinite space: though it be true that the word place has sometimes a more confused sense, and stands for that space which any body takes up; and so the universe is in a place. The idea therefore of place we have by the same means that we get the idea of space (whereof this is but a particular limited consideration), viz. by our sight and touch; by either of which we receive into our minds the ideas of extension or distance.