1. For the understanding speculative. There are some general maxims
and notions in the mind of man which are the rules of discourse and
the basis of all philosophy: as, that the same thing can not at the
same time be and not be; that the whole is bigger than a part; that
two dimensions, severally equal to a third, must also be equal to one
another. Aristotle, indeed, affirms the mind to be at first a mere
_tabula rasa_, and that these notions are not ingenit, and imprinted
by the finger of nature, but by the later and more languid impressions
of sense, being only the reports of observation, and the result of so
many repeated experiments.
(1.) That these notions are universal, and what is universal must
needs proceed from some universal, constant principle, the same in all
particulars, which here can be nothing else but human nature.
(2.) These can not be infused by observation, because they are the
rules by which men take their first apprehensions and observations of
things, and therefore, in order of nature, must needs precede them;
as the being of the rule must be before its application to the thing
directed by it.
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