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 praecognita 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.
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