103.  That which I see is only variety of light and colours.  That which I feel is hard or soft, hot or cold, rough or smooth.  What similitude, what connexion have those ideas with these?  Or how is it possible that anyone should see reason to give one and the same name to combinations of ideas so very different before he had experienced their coexistence?  We do not find there is any necessary connexion betwixt this or that tangible quality and any colour whatsoever.  And we may sometimes perceive colours where there is nothing to be felt.  All which doth make it manifest that no man, at first receiving of his sight, would know there was any agreement between this or that particular object of his 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.