he has them in his mind, that the ideas he calls white and round are the very ideas they are, and that they are not other ideas which he calls red or square.

cerned for, is the certainty of faith. Now, my lord, I humbly conceive the certainty of faith, if your lordship thinks fit to call it so, has nothing to do with the certainty of knowlege; as to talk of the certainty of faith, seems all one to me, as to talk of the knowlege of believing, a way of speaking not easy to me to understand.

Place knowlege in what you will; start what new methods of certainty you please, that are apt to leave men's minds more doubtful than before; place certainty on such grounds as will leave little or no knowlege in the world (for these are the arguments your lordship uses against my definition of knowlege); this shakes not at all, nor in the least concerns, the assurance of faith; that is quite distinct from it, neither stands nor falls with knowlege.

Faith stands by itself, and on grounds of its own; nor can be removed from them, and placed on those of knowlege. Their grounds are so far from being the same, or having any thing common, that when it is brought to certainty, faith is destroyed; it is knowlege then, and faith no longer.

With what assurance soever of believing I assent to any article of faith, so that I steadfastly venture my all on it, it is still but believing. Bring it to certainty, and it ceases to be faith. I believe that Jesus Christ was crucified, dead, and buried, rose again the third day from the dead, and ascended into heaven:' let now such methods of knowlege or certainty be started, as leave men's minds more doubtful than before; let the grounds of knowlege be resolved into what any one pleases, it touches not my faith; the foundation of that stands as sure as before, and cannot be at all shaken by it; and one may as well say, that any thing that weakens the sight, or casts a mist before the eyes, endangers the hearing; as that any thing which alters the nature of knowlege (if that could be done) should be of dangerous consequence to an article of faith.

Whether then I am, or am not mistaken, in the placing certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas; whether this account of knowlege be true or false, enlarges or straitens the bounds of it more than it should; faith stands still on its own basis, which is not at all altered by it; and every article of that has just the same unmoved foundation, and the very same credibility, that it had before. So that, my lord, whatever I have said about certainty, and how much soever I may be out in it, if I am mistaken, your lordship has no reason to apprehend any danger to any article of faith from thence; every one of them stands on the same bottom it did before, out of the reach of what belongs to knowlege and certainty. And thus R

Locke.

2. The next sort of agreement or disagreement is the perception of the relation between any two ideas; for since all distinct ideas must be known not to be the same, there could be no room for any positive knowlege at all if we could not perceive any relation between our ideas, and find out the agreement or disagreement they have one with another.

3. The third sort of agreement or disagreement to be found in our ideas is co-existence, or non-co-existence, and this belongs particularly to substances. Thus, when we say of gold that it is fixed, our knowlege amounts to no more but this, that fixedness is an idea that always accompanies that sort of yellowness, weight, fusibility, &c. which make our complex idea of gold.

4. The last sort is that of actual real existence, agreeing to any ideas. Within these four sorts of agreement or disagreement is contained all the knowlege we are capable of. I should now proceed to examine the several degrees of our knowlege; but it is necessary first to consider the different acceptations of the word knowlege.

There are several ways wherein the mind is possessed of truth, each of which is called knowlege. There is actual knowlege, which is the present view the mind has of the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas, or of the relation they have one to another. A man is said to know any thing which, having been once laid before his thoughts, he perceived the agreement or disagreement of the ideas whereof it conşists; and so lodged it in his memory, that when the proposition comes to be reflected on he assents to it without hesitation. This may be called habitual knowlege. Thus a man may be said to know all the truths

much of my way of certainty by ideas; which, I hope, will satisfy your lordship how far it is from being dangerous to any article of the Christian faith whatsoever.'

that are lodged in his memory: for if men had no knowlege of any thing more than they actually thought on, they would be very ignorant; and he that knew most would know but one truth at a time.

There are two sorts of habitual knowlege: the one is of such truths laid up in the memory, as whenever they occur to the mind, it actually perceives the relation between the ideas; and the other is of such truths, whereof the mind having been convinced, it retains the memory of the conviction, without the proofs. Thus a man remembering that he once perceived the demonstration, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, is certain that he knows it. Though, in adherence to a truth, where the demonstration is forgotten, a man may be thought to believe his memory, rather than to know; yet, on due examination, I find it comes not short of certainty, and is in effect true knowlege. That which is apt to lead to a mistake is, that the agreement or disagreement of the ideas in this case is not perceived as it was at first, by actual view, but by other intermediate ideas. For example, in the proposition that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones-one who has seen the demonstration of this truth knows it to be true,' when the demonstration is gone out of his mind; but he knows it in a different way. He remembers, i. e. he knows, that he was once certain of the truth of the proposition. The immutability of the same relation between the same immutable things is now the idea that shows him that, if the three angles of a triangle were once equal to two right ones, they will always be so. On this ground particular demonstrations in mathematics afford general knowlege. But because the memory is not always so clear as actual perception, and does in all men more or less decay in length of time, this, amongst other differences, is one, which shows that demonstrative knowlege is much more im

perfect than intuitive, as we shall see in the following chapter.

CHAPTER II.

Of the Degrees of our Knowlege.

All our knowlege consisting in the view the mind has of its own ideas, which is the utmost light and greatest certainty we are capable of, the different clearness of our knowlege seems to lie in the different way of perception the mind has of the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas.

When the mind perceives this agreement or disagreement of two ideas immediately by themselves, without the intervention of any other, we may call it intuitive knowlege, in which cases the mind perceives truth as the eye does light, only by being directed towards it. Thus the mind perceives that white is not black, that three are more than two, and equal to one and two. This part of knowlege is irresistible, and, like the bright sunshine, forces itself immediately to be perceived, as soon as ever the mind turns its view that way. It is on this intuition that depends all the certainty and evidence of our other knowlege; which certainty every one finds to be so great, that he cannot imagine, and therefore not require a greater.

The next degree of knowlege is, where the mind perceives not this agreement or disagreement immediately, or by the juxtaposition, as it were, of the ideas, because those ideas, concerning whose agreement or disagreement the inquiry is made, cannot by the mind be so put together as to show it. In this case the mind is fain to discover the agreement or disagreement which it searches, by the intervention of other ideas; and this is that which we call reasoning. And thus, if we would know the agreement or disagreement in bigness, between the three angles of a triangle and two right angles, we cannot by an im

mediate view and comparing them do it; because the three angles of a triangle cannot be brought at once and be compared with any other one or two angles; so of this the mind has no immediate or intuitive knowlege. But we must find out some other angles; to which the three angles of a triangle have equality, and finding those equal to two right ones, we come to know the equality of these three angles to two right ones. Those intervening ideas which serve to show the agreement of any two others are called proofs; and where the agreement or disagreement is by this means plainly and clearly perceived, it is called demonstration. A quickness in the mind to find those proofs, and to apply them right, is, I suppose, that which is called sagacity.

This knowlege, though it be certain, is not so clear and evident as intuitive knowlege. It requires pains and attention, and steady application of mind, to discover the agreement or disagreement of the ideas it considers, and there must be a progression by steps and degrees before the mind can in this way arrive at certainty. Before demonstration there was a doubt which in intuitive knowlege cannot happen to the mind, that has its faculty of perception left to a degree capable of distinct ideas, no more than it can be a doubt to the eye, that can distinctly see white and black, whether this ink and paper be all of a color.

Now in every step that reason makes in demonstrative knowlege there is an intuitive knowlege of that agreement or disagreement it seeks with the next intermediate idea, which it uses as a proof; for if it were not so, that yet would need a proof; since, without the perception of such agreement or disagreement, there is no knowlege produced. By which it is evident that every step in reasoning that produces knowlege has intuitive certainty; which, when the mind perceives, there is no more required but to remember it, to make the agreement or disagreement of the