bt, and needs no probation, nor can have any;
this being the highest of all human certainty. In this consists the
evidence of all those MAXIMS which nobody has any doubt about, but every
man (does not, as is said, only assent to, but) KNOWS to be true, as
soon as ever they are proposed to his understanding. In the discovery of
and assent to these truths, there is no use of the discursive faculty,
NO NEED OF REASONING, but they are known by a superior and higher degree
of evidence. And such, if I may guess at things unknown, I am apt to
think that angels have now, and the spirits of just men made perfect
shall have, in a future state, of thousands of things which now either
wholly escape our apprehensions, or which our short-sighted reason
having got some faint glimpse of, we, in the dark, grope after.

15. The next is got by Reasoning.

But though we have, here and there, a little of this clear light, some
sparks of bright knowledge, yet the greatest part of our ideas are such,
that we cannot discern their agreement or disagreement by an immediate
comparing them. And in all these we have NEED OF REASONING, and must, by
discourse and inference, make our discoveries. Now of these there are
two sorts, which I shall take the liberty to mention here again:--

First, through Reasonings that are Demonstrative.

First, Those whose agreement or disagreement, though it cannot be seen
by an immediate putting them together, yet may be examined by the
intervention of other ideas which can be compared with them. In this
case, when the agreement or disagreement of the intermediate idea, on
both sides, with those which we would compare, is PLAINLY DISCERNED:
there it amounts to DEMONSTRATION whereby knowledge is produced, which,
though it be certain, yet it is not so easy, nor altogether so clear
as intuitive knowledge. Because in that there is barely one simple
intuition, wherein there is no room for any the least mistake or doubt:
the truth is seen all perfectly at once. In demonstration, it is true,
there is intuition too, but not altogether at once; for there must be
a remembrance of the intuition of the agreement of the medium, or
intermediate idea, with that we compared it with before, when we compare
it with the other: and where there be many mediums, there the danger of
the mistake is the greater. For each agreement or disagreement of the
ideas must be observed and seen in each step of the whole train, and
retained in th