ause by constant and familiar use they are made
so. For, when we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find that GENERAL
IDEAS are fictions and contrivances of the mind, that carry difficulty
with them and do not so easily offer themselves as we are apt to
imagine. For example, does it not require some pains and skill to form
the general idea of a triangle,(which is yet none of the more abstract,
comprehensive, and difficult,) for it must be neither oblique nor
rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalinon; but all and
none of these at once. In effect, it is something imperfect, that cannot
exist; an idea wherein some part of several different and inconsistant
ideas are put together. It is true, the mind, in this imperfect state,
has need of such ideas, and makes all the haste to them it can, for the
conveniency of communication and enlargement of knowledge; to both which
it is naturally very much inclined. But yet one has reason to suspect
such ideas are marks of our imperfection; at least, this is enough to
show that the most abstract and general ideas are not those that the
mind is first and most easily acquainted with, nor such as its earliest
knowledge is conversant about.

10. Because on perception of them the other Parts of our Knowledge do
not depend.

Secondly, from what has been said it plainly follows, that these
magnified maxims are not the principles and foundations of all our other
knowledge. For if there be a great many other truths, which have as much
self-evidence as they, and a great many that we know before them, it is
impossible they should be the principles from which we deduce all other
truths. Is it impossible to know that one and two are equal to three,
but by virtue of this, or some such axiom, viz. 'the whole is equal to
all its parts taken together?' Many a one knows that one and two are
equal to three, without having heard, or thought on, that or any other
axiom by which it might be proved; and knows it as certainly as any
other man knows, that 'the whole is equal to all its parts,' or any
other maxim; and all from the same reason of self-evidence: the equality
of those ideas being as visible and certain to him without that or any
other axiom as with it, it needing no proof to make it perceived. Nor
after the knowledge, that the whole is equal to all its parts, does he
know that one and two are equal to three, better or more certainly than
he did before. For if there be any odds in