those ideas, the whole and
parts are more obscure, or at least more difficult to be settled in the
mind than those of one, two, and three. And indeed, I think, I may ask
these men, who will needs have all knowledge, besides those general
principles themselves, to depend on general, innate, and self-evident
principles. What principle is requisite to prove that one and one are
two, that two and two are four, that three times two are six? Which
being known without any proof, do evince, That either all knowledge does
not depend on certain PRAECOGNITA or general maxims, called principles;
or else that these are principles: and if these are to be counted
principles, a great part of numeration will be so. To which, if we
add all the self-evident propositions which may be made about all
our distinct ideas, principles will be almost infinite, at least
innumerable, which men arrive to the knowledge of, at different ages;
and a great many of these innate principles they never come to know all
their lives. But whether they come in view of the mind earlier or later,
this is true of them, that they are all known by their native evidence;
are wholly independent; receive no light, nor are capable of any proof
one from another; much less the more particular from the more general,
or the more simple from the more compounded; the more simple and
less abstract being the most familiar, and the easier and earlier
apprehended. But whichever be the clearest ideas, the evidence and
certainty of all such propositions is in this, That a man sees the same
idea to be the same idea, and infallibly perceives two different ideas
to be different ideas. For when a man has in his understanding the ideas
of one and of two, the idea of yellow, and the idea of blue, he cannot
but certainly know that the idea of one is the idea of one, and not the
idea of two; and that the idea of yellow is the idea of yellow, and not
the idea of blue. For a man cannot confound the ideas in his mind, which
he has distinct: that would be to have them confused and distinct at the
same time, which is a contradiction: and to have none distinct, is
to have no use of our faculties, to have no knowledge at all. And,
therefore, what idea soever is affirmed of itself, or whatsoever two
entire distinct ideas are denied one of another, the mind cannot
but assent to such a proposition as infallibly true, as soon as it
understands the terms, without hesitation or need of proof, or regardi