ar to any one, who will
but reflect on what is said in several places of this ESSAY.

I should now proceed to examine the several degrees of our knowledge,
but that it is necessary first, to consider the different acceptations
of the word KNOWLEDGE.

8. Knowledge is either actual or habitual.

There are several ways wherein the mind is possessed of truth; each of
which is called knowledge.

I. There is ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE, which is the present view the mind has of
the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas, or of the relation
they have one to another.

II. A man is said to know any proposition, which having been once
laid before his thoughts, he evidently perceived the agreement or
disagreement of the ideas whereof it consists; and so lodged it in his
memory, that whenever that proposition comes again to be reflected on,
he, without doubt or hesitation, embraces the right side, assents to,
and is certain of the truth of it. This, I think, one may call HABITUAL
KNOWLEDGE. And thus a man may be said to know all those truths which are
lodged in his memory, by a foregoing clear and full perception, whereof
the mind is assured past doubt as often as it has occasion to reflect
on them. For our finite understandings being able to think clearly and
distinctly but on one thing at once, if men had no knowledge of any more
than what they actually thought on, they would all be very ignorant: and
he that knew most, would know but one truth, that being all he was able
to think on at one time.

9. Habitual Knowledge is of two degrees.

Of habitual knowledge there are, also, vulgarly speaking, two degrees:

First, The one is of such truths laid up in the memory as, whenever they
occur to the mind, it ACTUALLY PERCEIVES THE RELATION is between those
ideas. And this is in all those truths whereof we have an intuitive
knowledge; where the ideas themselves, by an immediate view, discover
their agreement or disagreement one with another.

Secondly, The other is of such truths whereof the mind having been
convinced, it RETAINS THE MEMORY OF THE CONVICTION, WITHOUT THE PROOFS.
Thus, a man that remembers certainly that he once perceived the
demonstration, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two
right ones, is certain that he knows it, because he cannot doubt the
truth of it. In his adherence to a truth, where the demonstration by
which it was at first known is forgot, though a man may be thought
rather to believ