A Treatise of Human Nature

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BOOK I PART II


We may hence discover the error of the com-
mon opinion, that the capacity of the mind is
limited on both sides, and that it is impossi-
ble for the imagination to form an adequate
idea, of what goes beyond a certain degree of
minuteness as well as of greatness. Nothing
can be more minute, than some ideas, which
we form in the fancy; and images, which ap-
pear to the senses; since there are ideas and im-
ages perfectly simple and indivisible. The only
defect of our senses is, that they give us dis-
proportioned images of things, and represent
as minute and uncompounded what is really
great and composed of a vast number of parts.
This mistake we are not sensible of: but taking
the impressions of those minute objects, which
appear to the senses, to be equal or nearly equal
to the objects, and finding by reason, that there
are other objects vastly more minute, we too

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