3. Of co-ex-
istence.

§6. Thirdly, the third sort of agreement, or disagreement, to be found in our ideas, which the perception of the mind is employed about, is co-existence, or non-co-existence in the same subject; and this belongs particularly to substances. Thus when we pronounce concerning gold that it is fixed, our knowledge of this truth amounts to no more but this, that fixedness, or a power to remain in the fire unconsumed, is an idea that always accompanies, and is joined with that particular sort of yellowness, weight, fusibility, malleableness, and solubility in aq. regia, which make our complex idea, signified by the word gold.

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suppose it will be in vain to dispute against what they find and feel in themselves. And if I have not told them right and exactly what they find and feel in themselves, when their minds perform the act of knowing, what I have said will be all in vain; men will not be persuaded against their senses. Knowledge is an internal perception of their minds; and if, when they reflect on it, they find it is not what I have said it is, my groundless conceit will not be hearkened to, but be exploded by every body, and die of itself: and nobody need to be at any pains to drive it out of the world. So impossible is it to find out, or start new methods of certainty, or to have them received, if any one places it in any thing but in that wherein it really consists: much less can any one be in danger to be misled into error, by any such new, and to every one visibly senseless, project. Can it be supposed, that any one could start a new method of seeing, and persuade men thereby that they do not see what they do see? Is it to be feared, that any one can cast such a mist over their eyes, that they should not know when they see, and so be led out of their way by it?

Knowledge, I find in myself, and I conceive in others, consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of the immediate objects of the mind in thinking, which I call ideas: but whether it does so in others or no, must be determined by their own experience, reflecting upon the action of their mind in knowing; for that I cannot alter, nor, I think, they themselves. But whether they will call those immediate objects of their minds in thinking ideas or no, is perfectly in their own choice. If they dislike that name, they may call them notions or conceptions, or how they please; it matters not, if they use them so as to avoid obscurity and confusion. If they are constantly used in the same and a known sense, every one has the liberty to please himself in his terms; there lies neither truth, nor error, nor science, in that;

4. Of real existence.

$7. Fourthly, the fourth and last sort is that of actual and real existence agreeing to any idea. Within these four sorts of agreement or disagreement is, I suppose, contained all the knowledge we have, or are capable of: for all the inquiries we can make concerning any of our ideas, all that we know or can affirm concerning any of them, is, that it is, or is not, the same with some other; that it does, or does not, always co-exist with some other idea in the same subject; that it has this or that relation with some other idea; or that it has a real existence without the mind. Thus blue is not

though those that take them for things, and not for what they are, bare arbitrary signs of our ideas, make a great deal ado often about them; as if some great matter lay in the use of this or that sound. All that I know or can imagine of difference about them is, that those words are always best, whose significations are best known in the sense they are used; and so are least apt to breed confusion.

My lord, your lordship hath been pleased to find fault with my use of the new term, ideas, without telling me a better name for the immediate objects of the mind in thinking. Your lordship also has been pleased to find fault with my definition of knowledge, without doing me the favour to give me a better. For it is only about my definition of knowledge that all this stir concerning certainty is made. For, with me, to know and to be certain is the same thing; what I know, that I am certain of; and what I am certain of, that I know. What reaches to knowledge, I think may be called certainty; and what comes short of certainty, I think cannot be called knowledge; as your lordship could not but observe in the 18th section of chap. 4. of my 4th book, which you have quoted.

My definition of knowledge stands thus: "knowledge seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas." This definition your lordship dislikes, and apprehends it may be of dangerous consequence as to that article of christian faith which your lordship hath endeavoured to defend. For this there is a very easy remedy it is but for your lordship to set aside this definition of knowledge by giving us a better, and this danger is over. But your lordship chooses rather to have a controversy with my book for having it in it, and to put me upon the defence of it; for which I must acknowledge myself obliged to your lordship for affording me so much of your time, and for allowing me the honour of conversing so much with one so far above me in all respects.

yellow; is of identity: two triangles upon equal bases between two parallels are equal; is of relation: iron is susceptible of magnetical impressions; is of co-existence: God is; is of real existence. Though identity and co-existence are truly nothing but relations, yet they are such peculiar ways of agreement or disagreement of our ideas, that they deserve well to be considered as distinct heads, and not under relation in general; since they are so different grounds of affirmation and negation as will easily appear to any one, who will but reflect on what is said in several places of this essay. I should not proceed to examine the several degrees of our knowledge, but that it is necessary first to consider the different acceptations of the word knowledge.

Your lordship says, it may be of dangerous consequence to that article of christian faith which you have endeavoured to defend. Though the laws of disputing allow bare denial as a sufficient answer to sayings, without any offer of a proof: yet, my lord, to show how willing I am to give your lordship all satisfaction, in what you apprehend may be of dangerous consequence in my book, as to that article, I shall not stand still sullenly, and put your lordship upon the difficulty of showing wherein that danger lies; but shall, on the other side, endeavour to show your lordship that that definition of mine, whether true or false, right or wrong, can be of no dangerous consequence to that article of faith. The reason which I shall offer for it is this: because it can be of no consequence to it at all.

That which your lordship is afraid it may be dangerous to, is an article of faith that which your lordship labours and is concerned 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 knowledge. As to talk of the certainty of faith, seems all one to me, as to talk of the knowledge of believing, a way of speaking not easy to me to understand.

Place knowledge 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 ground as will leave little or no knowledge in the world (for these are the arguments your lordship uses against my definition of knowledge): 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 knowledge.

Faith stands by itself, and upon grounds of its own; nor can be removed from them, and placed on those of knowledge. Their

Knowledge actual or

§ 8. There are several ways wherein the mind is possessed of truth, each of which habitual. is called knowledge.

1. There is actual knowledge, 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.

2. A man is said to know any proposition, which having been once laid before his thoughts, he evidently perceived the agreement or disagreement of the ideas whereof it consists; and so lodged it in his memory, that whenever that proposition comes again to be reflected on, he, without doubt or hesitation, embraces

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 knowledge 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 upon 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 knowledge or certainty be started, as leave men's minds more doubtful than before; let the grounds of knowledge 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 knowledge (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 knowledge be true or false, enlarges or straitens the bounds of it more than it should,-faith still stands upon 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 upon the same bottom it did before, out of the reach of what belongs to knowledge and certainty. And thus 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.

the right side, assents to and is certain of the truth of it. This, I think, one may call habitual knowledge: and thus a man may be said to know all those truths which are lodged in his memory, by a foregoing clear and full perception, whereof the mind is assured past doubt, as often as it has occasion to reflect on them. For our finite understandings being able to think clearly and distinctly but on one thing at once, if men had no knowledge of any more than what they actually thought on, they would all be very ignorant; and he that knew most, would know but one truth, that being all he was able to think on at one time. § 9. Of habitual knowledge, there are also, vulgarly speaking, two degrees:

Habitual knowledge twofold.

First, the one is of such truths laid up in the memory, as, whenever they occur to the mind, it actually perceives the relation is between those ideas. And this is in all those truths whereof we have an intuitive knowledge; where the ideas themselves, by an immediate view, discover their agreement or disagreement one with another.

Secondly, 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 that remembers certainly 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, because he cannot doubt the truth of it. In his adherence to a truth, where the demonstration by which it was at first known is forgot, though a man may be thought rather to believe his memory than really to know, and this way of entertaining a truth seemed formerly to me like something between opinion and knowledge; a sort of assurance which exceeds bare belief, for that relies on the testimony of another: yet upon a due examination I find it comes not short of perfect certainty, and is in effect true knowledge. That which is apt to mislead our first thoughts into a mistake in this matter is, that the agreement or disagreement of the ideas in this case