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do we receive our light or knowledge from maxims. But in the one, the
things themselves afford it: and we see the truth in them by perceiving
their agreement or disagreement. In the other, God himself affords it
immediately to us: and we see the truth of what he says in his unerring
veracity.

(3) Nor as helps in the discovery of yet unknown truths.

They are not of use to help men forward in the advancement of sciences,
or new discoveries of yet unknown truths. Mr. Newton, in his never
enough to be admired book, has demonstrated several propositions, which
are so many new truths, before unknown to the world, and are further
advances in mathematical knowledge: but, for the discovery of these, it
was not the general maxims, 'what is, is;' or, 'the whole is bigger than
a part,' or the like, that helped him. These were not the clues that led
him into the discovery of the truth and certainty of those propositions.
Nor was it by them that he got the knowledge of those demonstrations,
but by finding out intermediate ideas that showed the agreement
or disagreement of the ideas, as expressed in the propositions he
demonstrated. This is the greatest exercise and improvement of human
understanding in the enlarging of knowledge, and advancing the
sciences; wherein they are far enough from receiving any help from the
contemplation of these or the like magnified maxims. Would those who
have this traditional admiration of these propositions, that they think
no step can be made in knowledge without the support of an axiom, no
stone laid in the building of the sciences without a general maxim,
but distinguish between the method of acquiring knowledge, and of
communicating it; between the method of raising any science, and that
of teaching it to others, as far as it is advanced--they would see
that those general maxims were not the foundations on which the first
discoverers raised their admirable structures, nor the keys that
unlocked and opened those secrets of knowledge. Though afterwards, when
schools were erected, and sciences had their professors to teach what
others had found out, they often made use of maxims, i.e. laid down
certain propositions which were self-evident, or to be received
for true; which being settled in the minds of their scholars as
unquestionable verities, they on occasion made use of, to convince them
of truths in particular instances, that were not so familiar to their
minds as those general axioms whic