Nor after the knowledge, that the whole is equal to all its parts, does he know that one and two are equal to three, better or more certainly than he did before.

For if there be any odds in those ideas, the whole and parts are more obscure, or at least more difficult to be settled in the mind than those of one, two, and three.

And indeed, I think, I may ask these men, who will needs have all knowledge, besides those general principles themselves, to depend on general, innate, and self-evident principles.

What principle is requisite to prove that one and one are two, that two and two are four, that three times two are six?
Which being known without any proof, do evince, That either all knowledge does not depend on certain PRAECOGNITA or general maxims, called principles; or else that these are principles: and if these are to be counted principles, a great part of numeration will be so.

To which, if we add all the self-evident propositions which may be made about all our distinct ideas, principles will be almost infinite, at least innumerable, which men arrive to the knowledge of, at different ages; and a great many of these innate principles they never come to know all their lives.