3. But from comparing clear and distinct ideas. But if any one
will consider, he will (I guess) find, that the great advancement
and certainty of real knowledge which men arrived to in these
sciences, was not owing to the influence of these principles, nor
derived from any peculiar advantage they received from two or three
general maxims, laid down in the beginning; but from the clear,
distinct, complete ideas their thoughts were employed about, and the
relation of equality and excess so clear between some of them, that
they had an intuitive knowledge, and by that a way to discover it in
others; and this without the help of those maxims. For I ask, Is it
not possible for a young lad to know that his whole body is bigger
than his little finger, but by virtue of this axiom, that the whole is
bigger than a part; nor be assured of it, till he has learned that
maxim? Or cannot a country wench know that, having received a shilling
from one that owes her three, and a shilling also from another that
owes her three, the remaining debts in each of their hands are
equal? Cannot she know this, I say, unless she fetch the certainty
of it from this maxim, that if you take equals from equals, the
remainder will be equals, a maxim which possibly she never heard or
thought of? I desire any one to consider, from what has been elsewhere
said, which is known first and clearest by most people, the particular
instance, or the general rule; and which it is that gives life and
birth to the other.
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