But yet [masters of mathematics, when they would, as teachers of what they know, initiate others in that science do not] without reason place this and some other such maxims [at the entrance of their systems]; that their scholars, having in the beginning perfectly acquainted their thoughts with these propositions, made in such general terms, may be used to make such reflections, and have these more general propositions, as formed rules and sayings, ready to apply to all particular cases.

Not that if they be equally weighed, they are more clear and evident than the particular instances they are brought to confirm; but that, being more familiar to the mind, the very naming them is enough to satisfy the understanding.

But this, I say, is more from our custom of using them, and the establishment they have got in our minds by our often thinking of them, than from the different evidence of the things.

But before custom has settled methods of thinking and reasoning in our minds, I am apt to imagine it is quite otherwise; and that the child, when a part of his apple is taken away, knows it better in that particular instance, than by this general proposition, 'The whole is equal to all its parts;' and that, if one of these have need to be confirmed to him by the other, the general has more need to be let into his mind by the particular, than the particular by the general.
For in _particulars_ our knowledge begins, and so spreads itself, by degrees, to _generals_ [Footnote: This is the order in time of the conscious acquistion of knowledge that is human.

The _Essay_ might be regarded as a commentary on this one sentence.