202 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III. 



knowledge we attain in this life, mud be of the kind that Plato fup- 

 pofes : For as tlie tendency of our progrefs in this life is to reftore 

 us to what we had loft by the fall, fo every thing we acquire in this 

 life is no more than regaining what we loft by our fall: And, there- 

 fore, if all the knowledge we acquire here was new knowledge, 

 we could not be faid, fo properly, to be rejiored to the former ftate, 

 as to be recreated; and there would be fomething, of which we ob- 

 ferve no other inftance in nature, I mean a thing, that once exifted, 

 being entirely loft and annihilated. 



This argument, I know, will appear to many too metaphyfical, 

 and too fiir fetched. I will, therefore, give another, which comes 

 nearer to the point, and, I think, is abfolute demonftration. It is 

 taken from the nature of knowledge and of learning. A man can 

 only learn who is ignorant. Now, ignorance is of two different 

 kinds ; for either we are ignorant altogether, and were fo from the 

 beginning, never having known the thing ; or wc once knew the 

 thing, but have forgot it, and fo are ignorant of it. If the hrft were 

 the cafe, we never could learn any thing in this life, unlefs by 

 infpiration ; for all learning, whether w^e teach ourfclves or teach 

 others, muft proceed from fomething that we or they knew before, 

 but which may have been forgotten; for here the maxim will apply^ 

 ex nih'ilo nihil fit. If, therefore, we have not, nor ever had, any 

 knowledge, we can learn nothing. Now this knowledge, which we 

 thus recover when we firft come into the world and begin to cul- 

 tivate arts and fciences, we muft have had in another ftate of our 

 exiftence, but have loft or forgotten it. 



By this knowledge, thus recovered, we form ideas, and perceive 

 that thofe ideas reprefent to us the nature of the thing we want to 

 knovv: And, further, it is by this reminifcence, or recovered know- 

 ledge, that we perceive the tiuth of axioms. By the fame fore- 

 knowledge. 



