ink that this proposition, 'A
hill is higher than a valley', and several the like, may also pass for
maxims. But yet [masters of mathematics, when they would, as teachers of
what they know, initiate others in that science do not] without reason
place this and some other such maxims [at the entrance of their
systems]; that their scholars, having in the beginning perfectly
acquainted their thoughts with these propositions, made in such general
terms, may be used to make such reflections, and have these more general
propositions, as formed rules and sayings, ready to apply to all
particular cases. Not that if they be equally weighed, they are more
clear and evident than the particular instances they are brought to
confirm; but that, being more familiar to the mind, the very naming them
is enough to satisfy the understanding. But this, I say, is more from
our custom of using them, and the establishment they have got in our
minds by our often thinking of them, than from the different evidence
of the things. But before custom has settled methods of thinking and
reasoning in our minds, I am apt to imagine it is quite otherwise; and
that the child, when a part of his apple is taken away, knows it better
in that particular instance, than by this general proposition, 'The
whole is equal to all its parts;' and that, if one of these have need to
be confirmed to him by the other, the general has more need to be let
into his mind by the particular, than the particular by the general.
For in _particulars_ our knowledge begins, and so spreads itself, by
degrees, to _generals_ [Footnote: This is the order in time of the
conscious acquistion of knowledge that is human. The _Essay_ might be
regarded as a commentary on this one sentence. Our intellectual progress
is from particulars and involuntary recipiency, through reactive doubt
and criticism, into what is at last reasoned faith.]. Though afterwards
the mind takes the quite contrary course, and having drawn its knowledge
into as general propositions as it can, makes those familiar to its
thoughts, and accustoms itself to have recourse to them, as to the
standards of truth and falsehood. [Footnote: This is the philosophic
attitude. Therein one consciously apprehends the intellectual
necessities that were UNCONCIOUSLY PRESUPPOSED, its previous
intellectual progress. In philosophy we 'draw our knowledge into as
general propositions as it can' be made to assume, and thus either learn
to see