Angels of all sorts are naturally beyond our discovery;
and all those intelligences, whereof it is likely there are more
orders than of corporeal substances, are things whereof our natural
faculties give us no certain account at all. That there are minds
and thinking beings in other men as well as himself, every man has a
reason, from their words and actions, to be satisfied: and the
knowledge of his own mind cannot suffer a man that considers, to be
ignorant that there is a God. But that there are degrees of
spiritual beings between us and the great God, who is there, that,
by his own search and ability, can come to know? Much less have we
distinct ideas of their different natures, conditions, states, powers,
and several constitutions wherein they agree or differ from one
another and from us. And, therefore, in what concerns their
different species and properties we are in absolute ignorance.
28. Another cause, want of a discoverable connexion between ideas we
have. Secondly, What a small part of the substantial beings that are
in the universe the want of ideas leaves open to our knowledge, we
have seen. In the next place, another cause of ignorance, of no less
moment, is a want of a discoverable connexion between those ideas we
have. For wherever we want that, we are utterly incapable of universal
and certain knowledge; and are, in the former case, left only to
observation and experiment: which, how narrow and confined it is,
how far from general knowledge we need not be told.
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