The first beginnings, therefore, of knowledge, are the phantasms of sense and imagination; and that there be such phantasms we know well enough by nature; but to know why they be, or from what causes they proceed, is the work of ratiocination; which consists (as is said above, in the 1st Chapter, Art. 2) in _composition_, and _division_ or _resolution_. There is therefore no method, by which we find out the causes of things, but is either _compositive_ or _resolutive_, or _partly compositive_, and _partly resolutive_. And the resolutive is commonly called _analytical_ method, as the compositive is called _synthetical_. [Sidenote: It is easier known concerning singular than universal things, that they are; and contrarily it is easier known concerning universal than singular things, why they are, or what are their causes.] 2. It is common to all sorts of method, to proceed from known things to unknown; and this is manifest from the cited definition of philosophy. But in knowledge by sense, the whole object is more known, than any part thereof; as when we see a man, the conception or whole idea of that man is first or more known, than the particular ideas of his being _figurate_, _animate_, and _rational_; that is, we first see the whole man, and take notice of his being, before we observe in him those other particulars. And therefore in any knowledge of the ὅτι, or that any thing _is_, the beginning of our search is from the whole idea; and contrarily, in our knowledge of the διότι, or of the causes of any thing, that is, in the sciences, we have more knowledge of the causes of the parts than of the whole. For the cause of the whole is compounded of the causes of the parts; but it is necessary that we know the things that are to be compounded, before we can know the whole compound. Now, by parts, I do not here mean parts of the thing itself, but parts of its nature; as, by the parts of man, I do not understand his head, his shoulders, his arms, &c. but his figure, quantity, motion, sense, reason, and the like; which accidents being compounded or put together, constitute the whole nature of man, but not the man himself. And this is the meaning of that common saying, namely, that some things are more known to us, others more known to nature; for I do not think that they, which so distinguish, mean that something is known to nature, which is known to no man; and therefore, by those things, that are more known to us, we are to understand things we take notice of by our senses, and, by more known to nature, those we acquire the knowledge of by reason; for in this sense it is, that the _whole_, that is, those things that have universal names, (which, for brevity's sake, I call _universal_) are more known to us than the _parts_, that is, such things as have names less universal, (which I therefore call _singular_); and the causes of the parts are more known to nature than the cause of the whole; that is,