If our sense of hearing were but a
thousand times quicker than it is, how would a perpetual noise
distract us. And we should in the quietest retirement be less able
to sleep or meditate than in the middle of a sea-fight. Nay, if that
most instructive of our senses, seeing, were in any man a thousand
or a hundred thousand times more acute than it is by the best
microscope, things several millions of times less than the smallest
object of his sight now would then be visible to his naked eyes, and
so he would come nearer to the discovery of the texture and motion
of the minute parts of corporeal things; and in many of them, probably
get ideas of their internal constitutions: but then he would be in a
quite different world from other people: nothing would appear the same
to him and others: the visible ideas of everything would be different.
So that I doubt, whether he and the rest of men could discourse
concerning the objects of sight, or have any communication about
colours, their appearances being so wholly different. And perhaps such
a quickness and tenderness of sight could not endure bright
sunshine, or so much as open daylight; nor take in but a very small
part of any object at once, and that too only at a very near distance.
And if by the help of such microscopical eyes (if I may so call
them) a man could penetrate further than ordinary into the secret
composition and radical texture of bodies, he would not make any great
advantage by the change, if such an acute sight would not serve to
conduct him to the market and exchange; if he could not see things
he was to avoid, at a convenient distance; nor distinguish things he
had to do with by those sensible qualities others do.
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