An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 3 and 4 — John Locke — John Shaqi
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 3 and 4
John Locke · en
Some of the ideas that are in the mind, are so there, that they can be
by themselves immediately compared one with another: and in these the
mind is able to perceive that they agree or disagree as clearly as that
it has them. Thus the mind perceives, that an arch of a circle is less
than the whole circle, as clearly as it does the idea of a circle: and
this, therefore, as has been said, I call INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE; which is
certain, beyond all doubt, 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.