to charge me.  I affirm them to be truths, self-evident truths; and so cannot be laid aside.  As far as their influence will reach, it is in vain to endeavour, nor will I attempt, to abridge it.  But yet, without any injury to truth or knowledge, I may have reason to think their use is not answerable to the great stress which seems to be laid on them; and I may warn men not to make an ill use of them, for the confirming themselves in errors.]

15.  They cannot add to our knowledge of Substances, and their Application to complex Ideas is dangerous.

But let them be of what use they will in verbal propositions, they cannot discover or prove to us the least knowledge of the nature of substances, as they are found and exist without us, any further than grounded on experience.  And though the consequence of these two propositions, called principles, be very clear, and their use not dangerous or hurtful, in the probation of such things wherein there is no need at all of them for proof, but such as are clear by themselves without them, viz. where our ideas are [determined] and known by the names that stand for them:  yet when these principles, viz.  what is, is, and it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be, are made use of in the probation of propositions wherein are words standing for complex ideas, v.g. man, horse, gold, virtue; there they are of infinite danger, and most commonly make men receive and retain falsehood for manifest truth, and uncertainty for demonstration:  upon which follow error, obstinacy, and all the mischiefs that can happen from wrong reasoning.  The reason whereof is not, that these principles are less true [or of less force] in proving propositions made of terms standing for complex ideas, than where the propositions are about simple ideas. [But because men mistake generally,—­thinking that where the same terms are preserved, the propositions are about the same things, though the ideas they stand for are in truth different, therefore these maxims are made use of to support those which in sound and appearance are contradictory propositions; and is clear in the demonstrations above mentioned about a vacuum.  So that whilst men take words for things, as usually they do, these maxims may and do commonly serve to prove contradictory propositions; as shall yet be further made manifest]

16.  Instance in demonstrations about Man which can only be verbal.

For instance:  let man be that concerning which you would by these first principles demonstrate anything, and we shall see, that so far as demonstration is by these principles, it is only verbal, and gives us no certain, universal, true proposition, or knowledge, of any being existing without us.  First, a child having framed the idea of a man, it is probable that his idea is just like that picture which the painter