1. Knowledge is not got from maxims.
It having been the common received opinion amongst men of letters, that
maxims were the foundation of all knowledge; and that the sciences were each of them built upon certain
praecognita from whence the understanding was to take its rise, and by which it was to conduct itself in its
inquiries into the matters belonging to that science, the beaten road of the Schools has been, to lay down in the
beginning one or more general propositions, as foundations whereon to build the knowledge that was to be had of
that subject. These doctrines, thus laid down for foundations of any science, were called principles, as the
beginnings from which we must set out, and look no further backwards in our inquiries, as we have already
observed.