But these two latter are our fault, and not
the fault of reason. But yet the consequences of them are nevertheless
obvious; and the perplexities or errors they fill men's minds with are
everywhere observable.
14. Our highest degree of knowledge is intuitive, without reasoning.
Some of the ideas that are in the mind, are so there, that they can be
by themselves immediately compared one with another: and in these
the mind is able to perceive that they agree or disagree as clearly as
that it has them. Thus the mind perceives, that an arch of a circle is
less than the whole circle, as clearly as it does the idea of a
circle: and this, therefore, as has been said, I call intuitive
knowledge; which is certain, beyond all doubt, and needs no probation,
nor can have any; this being the highest of all human certainty. In
this consists the evidence of all those maxims which nobody has any
doubt about, but every man (does not, as is said, only assent to, but)
knows to be true, as soon as ever they are proposed to his
understanding. In the discovery of and assent to these truths, there
is no use of the discursive faculty, no need of reasoning, but they
are known by a superior and higher degree of evidence. And such, if
I may guess at things unknown, I am apt to think that angels have now,
and the spirits of just men made perfect shall have, in a future
state, of thousands of things which now either wholly escape our
apprehensions, or which our short-sighted reason having got some faint
glimpse of, we, in the dark, grope after.
Pages:
1010
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034