ect
fragmentarily, confusedly, and without order through our senses
(II. xxix. Coroll.); I have settled to call such perceptions by
the name of knowledge from the mere suggestions of experience.[4]

[4] A Baconian phrase. Nov. Org. Aph. 100. [Pollock, p. 126, n.]

(2.) From symbols, e.g., from the fact of having read or heard
certain words we remember things and form certain ideas
concerning them, similar to those through which we imagine things
(II. xviii. note). I shall call both these ways of regarding
things knowledge of the first kind, opinion, or imagination.
(3.) From the fact that we have notions common to all men, and
adequate ideas of the properties of things (II. xxxviii. Coroll.,
xxxix. and Coroll. and xl.); this I call reason and knowledge of
the second kind. Besides these two kinds of knowledge, there is,
as I will hereafter show, a third kind of knowledge, which we
will call intuition. This kind of knowledge proceeds from an
adequate idea of the absolute essence of certain attributes of
God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things. I will
illustrate all three kinds of knowledge by a single example.
Three numbers are given for finding a fourth, which shall be to
the third as the second is to the first. Tradesmen without
hesitation multiply the second by the third, and divide the
product by the first; either because they have not forgotten the
rule which they received from a master without any proof, or
because they have often made trial of it with simple numbers, or
by virtue of the proof of the nineteenth proposition of the
seventh book of Euclid, namely, in virtue of the general property
of proportionals.

But with very simple numbers there is no need of this. For
instance, one, two, three, being given, everyone can see that the
fourth proportional is six; and this is much clearer, because we
infer the fourth number from an intuitive grasping of the ratio,
which the first bears to the second.

PROP. XLI. Knowledge of the first kind is the only source of
falsity, knowledge of the second and third kinds is necessarily
true.

Proof.--To knowledge of the first kind we have (in the
foregoing note) assigned all those ideas, which are inadequate
and confused; therefore this kind of knowledge is the only
source of falsity (II. xxxv.). Furthermore, we assigned to the
second and third kinds of knowledge those ideas which are
adequate; therefore these kinds are necessarily true (II.
xx