plete as it may be; but this we thought a fair beginning to so great an attempt, and that time must be given for a farther progress, and carrying it higher, by additional laws, as occasion may require. The woollen manufacture of England was not established at that high pitch, (to which now it is raised,) by any one law, or any one generation. It must be so with us in relation to our linen; but this, we hope, may be a fair step towards it: "Est aliquid prodire tenus, &c.'

James Hamilton of Tullymore, esq. is an indefatigable promoter of this design, and I may say indeed the whole scheme is owing to his contrivance. He is an hearty admirer of yours, and communicated to me the enclosed abstract purposely for your satisfaction; desiring me with it to give you his most humble service, and to request of you your thoughts concerning this matter, by the first leisure you can spare.

Whilst our house of commons were framing this bill, our lords justices communicated to us some papers which they had received from the lords justices of England, laid before them by your board. But these papers coming in a little too late, when we had just closed the bill, and a very little time before our last adjournment for three weeks; all we did with them was to remit them again to our lords justices and council, with the houses desire, that if their lordships should think fit to excerp any thing out of those papers, and add it to our act, whilst they had it before them, in order to be transmitted into England, their lordships might do therein as they pleased, and the house would agree to any such additions, when the act came before us transmitted in due form under the seal of England. Whether the lords justices will make any such additions out of those papers, I cannot yet tell; but I am sure there were many things in those papers that highly deserved to be put in execution.

My brother gives you his most humble service, and should be very proud of the present of your Education. For though he has yet only two daughters, yet he is in hopes of many sons; and the girls minds require as

much framing as the boys, and by the same rules; and that I take to be the chief part of education. I am,

Yours most sincerely,

WILL. MOLYNEUX.

Mr. MOLYNEUX to Mr. LOCKE.

Dublin, Oct, 28, 1697.

My most honoured Friend,

IF men could destroy by a quill, as they say porcu pines do, I should think your death not very far off, But whatever venom they mix with their ink against you, I hope it is not mortal; I am sure in my opinion it is not the least harmful or dangerous. Your Reply to the bishop of Worcester shows how vainly the mightiest champion spends his darts at you, and with what force and strength of reason you return them on their own heads. But notwithstanding this, I verily be lieve he will offer again at his weak efforts; for he that was so fully possessed of his own sufficiency, as to think he could deal with the first letter to him, will certainly never lay down the cudgels till his blood be about his ears and if he thought himself obliged in honour to justify his first blunders, much more will he think himself so now, when he is thrown over head and ears in the mire. To pass by all the rest of your Reply, (wherein you have given him many a severe wound,) I think he is no-where so clearly and disgracefully foiled, as by the conversation between you and your friend concerning his notions of nature and person. But, above all, the consequence you draw from thence, of his being obliged to write against his own Vindication of the Trinity, must needs wound him to the heart; and indeed I do not see how it is possible for him to avoid the force of that blow, by all his art and cunning.

Yet write he will, I am sure on it, and pour forth

abundance of words; but so he may for ever. I envy

not the place of his amanuensis.

But all this while I have forgot to return you my ac knowledgments for the favour of your book. I am extremely obliged to you for remembering me amongst your other friends, whenever you are pleased to oblige the learned world with any of your happy thoughts. I had no sooner perused them, but they were snatched out of my hands by my lord chancellor, (so covetous are all men of whatever comes from you,) and he has them yet.

Amongst the other small craft that appears against you, I met with one J. H.'s State of England, in relation to coin and trade. I hear the author's name is Hodges. He is much of a class in this particular, as Mr. Serjeant, in relation to your Essay, that is, both to me unintelligible.

The enclosed is a sample of what this place produces against you: I wish you may not say, that it resembles our mountains and bogs, in being barren and useless. I have ventured to send you my short answer thereto: for a longer I think it did not deserve. I have not seen the bishop since this has passed; but we are so good friends that this business will cause no anger between us. I am

Your most obliged and humble servant,

I HAVE met with Mr. Locke's Reply to the bishop of Worcester, and have had leisure to look it over here. I meddle not with the controversy between them, but

confess I am a little surprized at what I find p. 95 and 96, where we have these words: "To talk of the cer"tainty of faith, seems all one to me, as to talk of "the knowledge of believing." And, And, "When it is "brought to certainty, faith is destroyed:" And, "Bring it to certainty, and it ceases to be faith." And he in terms owns, p. 39, "With me to know and to "be certain, is the same thing; what I know, that I " am certain of; and what I am certain of, that I "know." And P. 92, Knowledge I find in myself, " and I conceive in others, consists in the perception " of the agreement or disagreement of the immediate "objects of the mind in thinking, which I call ideas.” And, p. 38, "Certainty consists in the perception of "the agreement or disagreement of two ideas." Now to me it seems, that according to Mr. Locke I cannot be said to know any thing except there be two ideas in my mind, and all the knowledge I have must be concerning the relation these two ideas have to one another, and that I can be certain of nothing else; which, in my opinion, excludes all certainty of sense and of single ideas, all certainty of consciousness, such as willing, believing, knowing, &c. and, as he confesses, all certainty of faith; and lastly, all certainty of remembrance, of what I have formerly demonstrated, as soon as I have forgot, or do not actually think of the demonstration. For I suppose you are well aware, that in demonstrating mathematical propositions, it is not always from actual perception of the agreement of ideas, that we assume other propositions formerly demonstrated to infer the conclusion, but from memory: and yet we do not think ourselves less certain on that account. If this be the importance of Mr. L.'s words, as it seems to me to be, then we are not certain of the acts of our mind; we are not certain of any thing that remains in our minds merely by the strength of our memory; and lastly, we are not certain of any proposition, though God and man witness the truth of it to us: and then judge how little certainty is left in the world, and how near this last comes to Mr. Toland's proposition, that authority or testimony is only "a means of information, not a

"ground of persuasion." For I must own, that I think I am only persuaded of the truth of a thing, in proportion to the certainty I have of it: and if knowledge and certainty be reciprocally the same, and consist in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas; where I do not perceive these, though God and man, nay the whole world should testify to me that they do agree or disagree, I cannot be certain of it, I must profess myself of another opinion; and I think I am as certain there was such a man as Mr. L. from the testimony of you, and other circumstances, though I perceive no agreement or disagreement in this case between the two ideas, to convince me of his being; as that the three angles of a straight-lined triangle are equal to two right angles, where I actually perceive the agreement, or rather equality: or, that the area of a cyclois is equal to triple the generating circle, of which I am certain by memory, though I do not at present perceive the demonstration, or any agreement between the ideas of three circles and a cyclois, only remember that I once perceived it.

Let me farther add, that agreement and disagreement are metaphorical terms when applied to ideas; for agreement properly, I think, either signifies, first, a compact between two persons; or, secondly, two things fitting one another, as the two parts of a tally; or, thirdly, the likeness of two things, as of a pair of coach-horses; or, fourthly, the aptitude of two things to support or preserve one another. So several meats agree with the stomach; but I do not find, that in a proposition the ideas have an agreement in any of these senses; and I rather think the old way of expressing this matter ought to be retained. I learned in Smiglecius, that when the "species intelligibilis" of the predicate was the same with the species of the subject, the one might be affirmed of the other; and when the "medius terminus" was the same with the one extreme term in one of the premises, and the other extreme the same with it in the other of the premises, the one might be affirmed of the other in the conclusion, because of the old axiom: "Quæ sunt idem uni tertio, sunt