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    "endpoint": "/api/sources/plotinus-enneads/ennead-2/8-why-distant-objects-appear-small.json"
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  "work": {
    "slug": "ennead-2",
    "name": "Ennead II — The Physical Cosmos"
  },
  "parents": [
    {
      "slug": "plotinus-enneads",
      "name": "Enneads",
      "url": "/sources/plotinus-enneads/"
    }
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 8,
    "slug": "8-why-distant-objects-appear-small",
    "title": "II.8 — Why Distant Objects Appear Small",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 877,
    "text": "## EIGHTH TRACTATE\n\n\n#### EIGHTH TRACTATE.\n\nWHY DISTANT OBJECTS APPEAR SMALL.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. Seen from a distance, objects appear reduced and close\ntogether, however far apart they be: within easy range, their sizes\nand the distances that separate them are observed correctly.\n\nDistant objects show in this reduction because they must be\ndrawn together for vision and the light must be concentrated to suit\nthe size of the pupil; besides, as we are placed farther and farther\naway from the material mass under observation, it is more\nand more the\nbare form that reaches us, stripped, so to speak, of magnitude as of\nall other quality.\n\nOr it may be that we appreciate the magnitude of an object by\nobserving the salience and recession of its several parts, so that\nto perceive its true size we must have it close at hand.\n\nOr again, it may be that magnitude is known incidentally [as a\ndeduction] from the observation of colour. With an object at hand we\nknow how much space is covered by the colour; at a distance,\nonly that\nsomething is coloured, for the parts, quantitatively distinct among\nthemselves, do not give us the precise knowledge of that\nquantity, the\ncolours themselves reaching us only in a blurred impression.\n\nWhat wonder, then, if size be like sound- reduced when the form\nreaches us but faintly- for in sound the hearing is concerned only\nabout the form; magnitude is not discerned except incidentally.\n\nWell, in hearing magnitude is known incidentally; but how? Touch\nconveys a direct impression of a visible object; what gives us the\nsame direct impression of an object of hearing?\n\nThe magnitude of a sound is known not by actual quantity but by\ndegree of impact, by intensity- and this in no indirect\nknowledge; the\near appreciates a certain degree of force, exactly as the palate\nperceives by no indirect knowledge, a certain degree of\nsweetness. But\nthe true magnitude of a sound is its extension; this the hearing may\ndefine to itself incidentally by deduction from the degree of\nintensity but not to the point of precision. The intensity is merely\nthe definite effect at a particular spot; the magnitude is a\nmatter of\ntotality, the sum of space occupied.\n\nStill the colours seen from a distance are faint; but\nthey are not\nsmall as the masses are.\n\nTrue; but there is the common fact of diminution. There is\ncolour with its diminution, faintness; there is magnitude with its\ndiminution, smallness; and magnitude follows colour diminishing\nstage by stage with it.\n\nBut, the phenomenon is more easily explained by the example of\nthings of wide variety. Take mountains dotted with houses, woods and\nother land-marks; the observation of each detail gives us\nthe means of\ncalculating, by the single objects noted, the total extent covered:\nbut, where no such detail of form reaches us, our vision, which\ndeals with detail, has not the means towards the knowledge of the\nwhole by measurement of any one clearly discerned magnitude. This\napplies even to objects of vision close at hand: where there is\nvariety and the eye sweeps over all at one glance so that the forms\nare not all caught, the total appears the less in proportion to the\ndetail which has escaped the eye; observe each single point and then\nyou can estimate the volume precisely. Again, magnitudes of\none colour\nand unbroken form trick the sense of quantity: the vision can no\nlonger estimate by the particular; it slips away, not finding the\nstand-by of the difference between part and part.\n\nIt was the detail that prevented a near object deceiving\nour sense\nof magnitude: in the case of the distant object, because the eye\ndoes not pass stage by stage through the stretch of intervening\nspace so as to note its forms, therefore it cannot report the\nmagnitude of that space.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. The explanation by lesser angle of vision has been elsewhere\ndismissed; one point, however, we may urge here.\n\nThose attributing the reduced appearance to the lesser angle\noccupied allow by their very theory that the unoccupied\nportion of the\neye still sees something beyond or something quite apart from the\nobject of vision, if only air-space.\n\nNow consider some very large object of vision, that mountain for\nexample. No part of the eye is unoccupied; the mountain adequately\nfills it so that it can take in nothing beyond, for the mountain as\nseen either corresponds exactly to the eye-space or\nstretches away out\nof range to right and to left. How does the explanation by lesser\nangle of vision hold good in this case, where the object\nstill appears\nsmaller, far, than it is and yet occupies the eye entire?\n\nOr look up to the sky and no hesitation can remain. Of course we\ncannot take in the entire hemisphere at one glance; the eye directed\nto it could not cover so vast an expanse. But suppose the\npossibility:\nthe entire eye, then, embraces the hemisphere entire; but the\nexpanse of the heavens is far greater than it appears; how can its\nappearing far less than it is be explained by a lessening of\nthe angle\nof vision?",
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  }
}