nk the things he perceived by sight to be at any distance
from him, or without his mind. The objects to which he had hitherto been
used to apply the terms UP and DOWN, HIGH and LOW, were such only as
affected or were some way perceived by his couch: but the proper objects
of vision make a new set of ideas, perfectly distinct and different from
the former, and which can in no sort make themselves perceived by touch.
There is, therefore, nothing at all that could induce him to think those
terms applicable to them: nor would he ever think it till such time as he
had observed their connexion with tangible objects, and the same
prejudice began to insinuate itself into his understanding, which from
their infancy had grown up in the understandings of other men.

96. To set this matter in a clearer light I shall make use of an example.
Suppose the above-mentioned blind person by his touch perceives a man to
stand erect. Let us inquire into the manner of this. By the application
of his hand to the several parts of a human body he had perceived
different tangible ideas, which being collected into sundry complex ones,
have distinct names annexed to them. Thus one combination of a certain
tangible figure, bulk, and consistency of parts is called the head,
another the hand, a third the foot, and so of the rest: all which complex
ideas could, in his understanding, be made up only of ideas perceivable
by touch. He had also by his touch obtained an idea of earth or ground,
towards which he perceives the parts of his body to have a natural
tendency. Now, by ERECT nothing more being meant than that perpendicular
position of a man wherein his feet are nearest to the earth, if the blind
person by moving his hand over the parts of the man who stands before him
perceives the tangible ideas that compose the head to be farthest from,
and those that compose the feet to be nearest to, that other combination
of tangible ideas which he calls earth, he will denominate that man
erect. But if we suppose him on a sudden to receive his sight, and that
he behold a man standing before him, it is evident in that case he would
neither judge the man he sees to be erect nor inverted; for he never
having known those terms applied to any other save tangible things, or
which existed in the space without him, and what he sees neither being
tangible nor perceived as existing without, he could not know that in
propriety of language they were applicable to it.

97.