So if any one should ask, in what 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 AEneids, 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. Place of the universe. That our idea of place is nothing else
but such a relative position of anything 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 anybody takes up; and so the universe is
in a place.
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