In which case the
cyphers or marks help not the mind at all to perceive the agreement of
any two or more numbers, their equalities or proportions; that the
mind has only by intuition of its own ideas of the numbers themselves.
But the numerical characters are helps to the memory, to record and
retain the several ideas about which the demonstration is made,
whereby a man may know how far his intuitive knowledge in surveying
several of the particulars has proceeded; that so he may without
confusion go on to what is yet unknown; and at last have in one view
before him the result of all his perceptions and reasonings.
20. Remedies of our difficulties in dealing demonstratively with
moral ideas. One part of these disadvantages in moral ideas which
has made them be thought not capable of demonstration, may in a good
measure be remedied by definitions, setting down that collection of
simple ideas, which every term shall stand for: and then using the
terms steadily and constantly for that precise collection. And what
methods algebra, or something of that kind, may hereafter suggest,
to remove the other difficulties, it is not easy to foretell.
Confident I am, that, if men would in the same method, and with the
same indifferency, search after moral as they do mathematical
truths, they would find them have a stronger connexion one with
another, and a more necessary consequence from our clear and
distinct ideas, and to come nearer perfect demonstration than is
commonly imagined.
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