This, I think, one may call
habitual knowledge. And thus a man may be said to know all those
truths which are lodged in his memory, by a foregoing clear and full
perception, whereof the mind is assured past doubt as often as it
has occasion to reflect on them. For our finite understandings being
able to think clearly and distinctly but on one thing at once, if
men had no knowledge of any more than what they actually thought on,
they would all be very ignorant: and he that knew most, would know but
one truth, that being all he was able to think on at one time.
9. Habitual knowledge is of two degrees. Of habitual knowledge there
are, also, vulgarly speaking. two degrees:
First, The one is of such truths laid up in the memory as,
whenever they occur to the mind, it actually perceives the relation is
between those ideas. And this is in all those truths whereof we have
an intuitive knowledge; where the ideas themselves, by an immediate
view, discover their agreement or disagreement one with another.
Secondly, The other is of such truths whereof the mind having been
convinced, it retains the memory of the conviction, without the
proofs. Thus, a man that remembers certainly that he once perceived
the demonstration, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to
two right ones, is certain that he knows it, because he cannot doubt
the truth of it.
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