y furnished with such ideas as we
have, we must conclude, he must needs, when he applies his thoughts to
the consideration of his ideas, know the truth of certain propositions
that will arise from the agreement or disagreement which he will
perceive in his own ideas. Such propositions are therefore called
ETERNAL TRUTHS, not because they are eternal propositions actually
formed, and antecedent to the understanding that at any time makes them;
nor because they are imprinted on the mind from any patterns that are
anywhere out of the mind, and existed before: but because, being once
made about abstract ideas, so as to be true, they will, whenever they
can be supposed to be made again at any time, past or come, by a mind
having those ideas, always actually be true. For names being supposed
to stand perpetually for the same ideas, and the same ideas having
immutably the same habitudes one to another, propositions concerning any
abstract ideas that are once true must needs be ETERNAL VERITIES.

CHAPTER XII. OF THE IMPROVEMENT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE

1. Knowledge is not got from Maxims.

IT having been the common received opinion amongst men of letters, that
MAXIMS were the foundation of all knowledge; and that the sciences
were each of them built upon certain PRAECOGNITA, from whence the
understanding was to take its rise, and by which it was to conduct
itself in its inquiries into the matters belonging to that science, the
beaten road of the Schools has been, to lay down in the beginning one or
more GENERAL PROPOSITIONS, as foundations whereon to build the knowledge
that was to be had of that subject. These doctrines, thus laid down for
foundations of any science, were called PRINCIPLES, as the beginnings
from which we must set out, and look no further backwards in our
inquiries, as we have already observed.

2. (The Occasion of that Opinion.)

One thing which might probably give an occasion to this way of
proceeding in other sciences, was (as I suppose) the good success it
seemed to have in MATHEMATICS, wherein men, being observed to attain a
great certainty of knowledge, these sciences came by pre-eminence to
be called [word in Greek], and [word in Greek], learning, or things
learned, thoroughly learned, as having of all others the greatest
certainty, clearness, and evidence in them.

3. But from comparing clear and distinct Ideas.

But if any one will consider, he will (I guess) find, that the great
advancem