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OF THE IMPROVEMENT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE.
1.

Knowledge is not got from Maxims.
IT having been the common received opinion amongst men of letters, that MAXIMS were the foundation of all knowledge; and that the sciences were each of them built upon certain PRAECOGNITA, from whence the understanding was to take its rise, and by which it was to conduct itself in its inquiries into the matters belonging to that science, the beaten road of the Schools has been, to lay down in the beginning one or more GENERAL PROPOSITIONS, as foundations whereon to build the knowledge that was to be had of that subject.

These doctrines, thus laid down for foundations of any science, were called PRINCIPLES, as the beginnings from which we must set out, and look no further backwards in our inquiries, as we have already observed.
2.

(The Occasion of that Opinion.) One thing which might probably give an occasion to this way of proceeding in other sciences, was (as I suppose) the good success it seemed to have in MATHEMATICS, wherein men, being observed to attain a great certainty of knowledge, these sciences came by pre-eminence to be called [word in Greek], and [word in Greek], learning, or things learned, thoroughly learned, as having of all others the greatest certainty, clearness, and evidence in them.
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