Index for Chapter XII - Of the Improvement of our Knowledge

1. Knowledge is not got from maxims.

2. (The occasion of that opinion.

3. But from comparing clear and distinct ideas.

4. Dangerous to build upon precarious principles.

5. To do so is no certain way to truth.

6. But to compare clear, complete ideas, under steady names.

7. The true method of advancing knowledge is by considering our abstract ideas.

8. By which morality also may he made clearer.

9. Our knowledge of substances is to be improved, not by contemplation of abstract ideas, but only by experience.

10. Experience may procure us convenience, not science.

11. We are fitted for moral science, but only for probable interpretations of external nature.

12. In the study of nature we must beware of hypotheses and wrong principles.

13. The true use of hypotheses.

14. Clear and distinct ideas with settled names, and the finding of those intermediate ideas which show their agreement or disagreement, are the ways to enlarge our knowledge.

15. Mathematics an instance of this.