nstrative, much less a self-evident knowledge: and, therefore,
concerning those, there are no maxims.

8. These Axioms do not much influence our other Knowledge.

In the next place let us consider, what influence these received maxims
have upon the other parts of our knowledge. The rules established in the
schools, that all reasonings are EX PRAECOGNITIS ET PRAECONCESSIS, seem
to lay the foundation of all other knowledge in these maxims, and to
suppose them to be PRAECOGNITA. Whereby, I think, are meant these two
things: first, that these axioms are those truths that are first known
to the mind; and, secondly, that upon them the other parts of our
knowledge depend.

9. Because Maxims or Axioms are not the Truths we first knew.

FIRST, That they are not the truths first known to the mind is evident
to experience, as we have shown in another place. (Book I. chap, 1.) Who
perceives not that a child certainly knows that a stranger is not its
mother; that its sucking-bottle is not the rod, long before he knows
that 'it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be?' And how
many truths are there about numbers, which it is obvious to observe that
the mind is perfectly acquainted with, and fully convinced of, before it
ever thought on these general maxims, to which mathematicians, in their
arguings, do sometimes refer them? Whereof the reason is very plain: for
that which makes the mind assent to such propositions, being nothing
else but the perception it has of the agreement or disagreement of its
ideas, according as it finds them affirmed or denied one of another in
words it understands; and every idea being known to be what it is,
and every two distinct ideas being known not to be the same; it must
necessarily follow that such self-evident truths must be first known
which consist of ideas that are first in the mind. And the ideas first
in the mind, it is evident, are those of particular things, from whence
by slow degrees, the understanding proceeds to some few general ones;
which being taken from the ordinary and familiar objects of sense, are
settled in the mind, with general names to them. Thus PARTICULAR IDEAS
are first received and distinguished, and so knowledge got about them;
and next to them, the less general or specific, which are next to
particular. For abstract ideas are not so obvious or easy to children,
or the yet unexercised mind, as particular ones. If they seem so to
grown men, it is only bec