criticism, into what is at last reasoned faith.].  Though afterwards the mind takes the quite contrary course, and having drawn its knowledge into as general propositions as it can, makes those familiar to its thoughts, and accustoms itself to have recourse to them, as to the standards of truth and falsehood. [Footnote:  This is the philosophic attitude.  Therein one consciously apprehends the intellectual necessities that were UNCONCIOUSLY presupposed, its previous intellectual progress.  In philosophy we ’draw our knowledge into as general propositions as it can’ be made to assume, and thus either learn to see it as an organic while in a speculative unity, or learn that it cannot be so seen in a finite intelligence, and that even at the last it must remain ‘broken’ and mysterious in the human understanding. ] By which familiar use of them, as rules to measure the truth of other propositions, it comes in time to be thought, that more particular propositions have their truth and evidence from their conformity to these more general ones, which, in discourse and argumentation, are so frequently urged, and constantly admitted.  And this I think to be the reason why, amongst so many self-evident propositions, the most general only have had the title of maxims.

12.  Maxims, if care be not taken in the Use of Words, may prove Contradictions.

One thing further, I think, it may not be amiss to observe concerning these general maxims, That they are so far from improving or establishing our minds in true knowledge that if our notions be wrong, loose, or unsteady, and we resign up our thoughts to the sound of words, rather than [fix them on settled, determined] ideas of things; I say these general maxims will serve to confirm us in mistakes; and in such a way of use of words, which is most common, will serve to prove contradictions:  v.g. he that with Descartes shall frame in his mind an idea of what he calls body to be nothing but extension, may easily demonstrate that there is no vacuum, i.e. no space void of body, by this maxim, what is, is.  For the idea to which he annexes the name body, being bare extension, his knowledge that space cannot be without body, is certain.  For he knows his own idea of extension clearly and distinctly, and knows that it is what it is, and not another idea, though it be called by these three names,—­extension, body, space.  Which three words, standing for one and the same idea, may, no doubt, with the same evidence and certainty be affirmed one of another, as each of itself:  and it is as certain, that, whilst I use them all to stand for one and the same idea, this predication is as true and identical in its signification, that ‘space is body,’ as this predication is true and identical, that ‘body is body,’ both in signification and sound.

13.  Instance in Vacuum.