is sight and any
object of touch he had been already acquainted with: the colours,
therefore, of the head would to him no more suggest the idea of head than
they would the idea of foot.

104. Farther, we have at large shown (VID. sect. 63 and 64) there is no
discoverable necessary connexion between any given visible magnitude and
any one particular tangible magnitude; but that it is entirely the result
of custom and experience, and depends on foreign and accidental
circumstances that we can by the perception of visible extension inform
ourselves what may be the extension of any tangible object connected with
it. Hence it is certain that neither the visible magnitude of head or
foot would bring along with them into the mind, at first opening of the
eyes, the respective tangible magnitudes of those parts.

105. By the foregoing section it is plain the visible figure of any part
of the body hath no necessary connexion with the tangible figure thereof,
so as at first sight to suggest it to the mind. For figure is the
termination of magnitude; whence it follows that no visible magnitude
having in its own nature an aptness to suggest any one particular
tangible magnitude, so neither can any visible figure be inseparably
connected with its corresponding tangible figure: so as of itself and in
a way prior to experience, it might suggest it to the understanding. This
will be farther evident if we consider that what seems smooth and round
to the touch may to sight, if viewed through a microscope, seem quite
otherwise.

106. From all which laid together and duly considered, we may clearly
deduce this inference. In the first act of vision no idea entering by the
eye would have a perceivable connexion with the ideas to which the names
EARTH, MAN, HEAD, FOOT, etc., were annexed in the understanding of a
person blind from his birth; so as in any sort to introduce them into his
mind, or make themselves be called by the same names, and reputed the
same things with them, as afterwards they come to be.

107. There doth, nevertheless, remain one difficulty, which perhaps may
seem to press hard on our opinion, and deserve not to be passed over: for
though it be granted that neither the colour, size, nor figure of the
visible feet have any necessary connexion with the ideas that compose the
tangible feet, so as to bring them at first sight into my mind, or make
me in danger of confounding them before I had been used to, and for some
time