now touching the object B. I might have used other criteria—for instance, another finger or the sense of sight—but the first criterion is sufficient. I know that if it answers in the affirmative all other criteria will give the same answer. I know it from experiment. I cannot know it à priori. For the same reason I say that touch cannot be exercised at a distance; that is another way of enunciating the same experimental fact. If I say, on the contrary, that sight is exercised at a distance, it means that the criterion furnished by sight may give an affirmative answer while the others reply in the negative.
To sum up. For each attitude of my body my finger determines a point, and it is that and that only which defines a point in space. To each attitude corresponds in this way a point. But it often happens that the same point corresponds to several different attitudes (in this case we say that our finger has not moved, but the rest of our body has). We distinguish, therefore, among changes of attitude those in which the finger does not move. How are we led to this? It is because we often remark that in these changes the object which is in touch with the finger remains in contact with it. Let us arrange then in the same class all the attitudes which are deduced one from the other by one of the changes that we have thus distinguished. To all these attitudes of the same class will correspond the same point in space. Then to each class will correspond a point, and to
