sition concerning one triangle or
circle, his knowledge would not reach beyond that particular diagram. If
he would extend it further, he must renew his demonstration in another
instance, before he could know it to be true in another like triangle,
and so on: by which means one could never come to the knowledge of
any general propositions. Nobody, I think, can deny, that Mr. Newton
certainly knows any proposition that he now at any time reads in his
book to be true; though he has not in actual view that admirable chain
of intermediate ideas whereby he at first discovered it to be true. Such
a memory as that, able to retain such a train of particulars, may
be well thought beyond the reach of human faculties, when the very
discovery, perception, and laying together that wonderful connexion of
ideas, is found to surpass most readers' comprehension. But yet it is
evident the author himself knows the proposition to be true, remembering
he once saw the connexion of those ideas; as certainly as he knows such
a man wounded another, remembering that he saw him run him through. But
because the memory is not always so clear as actual perception, and does
in all men more or less decay in length of time, this, amongst other
differences, is one which shows that DEMONSTRATIVE knowledge is much
more imperfect than INTUITIVE, as we shall see in the following chapter.

CHAPTER II.

OF THE DEGREES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE.

1. Of the degrees, or differences in clearness, of our Knowledge:
I. Intuitive

All our knowledge consisting, as I have said, in the view the mind has
of its own ideas, which is the utmost light and greatest certainty we,
with our faculties, and in our way of knowledge, are capable of, it
may not be amiss to consider a little the degrees of its evidence. The
different clearness of our knowledge seems to me to lie in the different
way of perception the mind has of the agreement or disagreement of any
of its ideas. For if we will reflect on our own ways of thinking,
we will find, that sometimes the mind perceives the agreement or
disagreement of two ideas IMMEDIATELY BY THEMSELVES, without the
intervention of any other: and this I think we may call INTUITIVE
KNOWLEDGE. For in this the mind is at no pains of proving or examining,
but perceives the truth as the eye doth light, only by being directed
towards it. Thus the mind perceives that WHITE is not BLACK, that a
CIRCLE is not a TRIANGLE, that THREE are more than TW