But they who observe how many things
regarding the magnet, fire, and the fabric of the whole world, are
here deduced from a very small number of principles, though they
deemed that I had taken them up at random and without grounds, will
yet perhaps acknowledge that it could hardly happen that so many
things should cohere if these principles were false.
CCVI. That we possess even more than a moral certainty of it.
Besides, there are some, even among natural, things which we judge
to be absolutely certain. [Absolute certainty arises when we judge
that it is impossible a thing can be otherwise than as we think it].
This certainty is founded on the metaphysical ground, that, as God
is supremely good and the source of all truth, the faculty of
distinguishing truth from error which he gave us, cannot be
fallacious so long as we use it aright, and distinctly perceive
anything by it. Of this character are the demonstrations of
mathematics, the knowledge that material things exist, and the clear
reasonings that are formed regarding them. The results I have given
in this treatise will perhaps be admitted to a place in the class of
truths that are absolutely certain, if it be considered that they
are deduced in a continuous series from the first and most
elementary principles of human knowledge; especially if it be
sufficiently understood that we can perceive no external objects
unless some local motion be caused by them in our nerves, and that
such motion cannot be caused by the fixed stars, owing to their
great distance from us, unless a motion be also produced in them and
in the whole heavens lying between them and us: for these points
being admitted, all the others, at least the more general doctrines
which I have advanced regarding the world or earth [e.
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