10. Because on perception of them the other parts of our knowledge do not depend.
Secondly, from what has been
said it plainly follows, that these magnified maxims are not the principles and foundations of all our other
knowledge. For if there be a great many other truths, which have as much self-evidence as they, and a great many
that we know before them, it is impossible they should be the principles from which we deduce all other truths. Is
it impossible to know that one and two are equal to three, but by virtue of this, or some such axiom, viz., "the
whole is equal to all its parts taken together?" Many a one knows that one and two are equal to three, without
having heard, or thought on, that or any other axiom by which it might be proved; and knows it as certainly as any
other man knows, that "the whole is equal to all its parts," or any other maxim; and all from the same reason of
self-evidence: the equality of those ideas being as visible and certain to him without that or any other axiom as
with it, it needing no proof to make it perceived. Nor after the knowledge, that the whole is equal to all its parts,
does he know that one and two are equal to three, better or more certainly than he did before. For if there be any
odds in those ideas, the whole and parts are more obscure, or at least more difficult to be settled in the mind than
those of one, two, and three. And indeed, I think, I may ask these men, who will needs have all knowledge,
besides those general principles themselves, to depend on general, innate, and self-evident principles. What
principle is requisite to prove that one and one are two, that two and two are four, that three times two are six?
Which being known without any proof, do evince, That either all knowledge does not depend on certain
præcognita or general maxims, called principles; or else that these are principles: and if these are to be counted
principles, a great part of numeration will be so. To which, if we add all the self-evident propositions which may
be made about all our distinct ideas, principles will be almost infinite, at least innumerable, which men arrive to
the knowledge of, at different ages; and a great many of these innate principles they never come to know all their
lives. But whether they come in view of the mind earlier or later, this is true of them, that they are all known by
their native evidence; are wholly independent; receive no light, nor are capable of any proof one from another;
much less the more particular from the more general, or the more simple from the more compounded; the more
simple and less abstract being the most familiar, and the easier and earlier apprehended. But whichever be the
clearest ideas, the evidence and certainty of all such propositions is in this, That a man sees the same idea to be
the same idea, and infallibly perceives two different ideas to be different ideas. For when a man has in his
understanding the ideas of one and of two, the idea of yellow, and the idea of blue, he cannot but certainly know
that the idea of one is the idea of one, and not the idea of two; and that the idea of yellow is the idea of yellow,
and not the idea of blue. For a man cannot confound the ideas in his mind, which he has distinct: that would be to
have them confused and distinct at the same time, which is a contradiction: and to have none distinct, is to have
no use of our faculties, to have no knowledge at all. And, therefore, what idea soever is affirmed of itself, or
whatsoever two entire distinct ideas are denied one of another, the mind cannot but assent to such a proposition as
infallibly true, as soon as it understands the terms, without hesitation or need of proof, or regarding those made in
more general terms and called maxims.
