7. And of moral. And hence it follows that moral knowledge is as
capable of real certainty as mathematics. For certainty being but
the perception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, and
demonstration nothing but the perception of such agreement, by the
intervention of other ideas or mediums; our moral ideas, as well as
mathematical, being archetypes themselves, and so adequate and
complete ideas; all the agreement or disagreement which we shall
find in them will produce real knowledge, as well as in mathematical
figures.
8. Existence not required to make abstract knowledge real. For the
attaining of knowledge and certainty, it is requisite that we have
determined ideas: and, to make our knowledge real, it is requisite
that the ideas answer their archetypes. Nor let it be wondered, that I
place the certainty of our knowledge in the consideration of our
ideas, with so little care and regard (as it may seem) to the real
existence of things: since most of those discourses which take up
the thoughts and engage the disputes of those who pretend to make it
their business to inquire after truth and certainty, will, I
presume, upon examination, be found to be general propositions, and
notions in which existence is not at all concerned. All the discourses
of the mathematicians about the squaring of a circle, conic
sections, or any other part of mathematics, concern not the
existence of any of those figures: but their demonstrations, which
depend on their ideas, are the same, whether there be any square or
circle existing in the world or no.
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