No discourse whatsoever can end in absolute knowledge of fact, past or to come. For, as for the knowledge of fact, it is originally sense; and ever after, memory. And for the knowledge of consequence, which I have said before is called science, it is not absolute, but conditional. No man can know by discourse, that this or that is, has been, or will be; which is to know absolutely; but only, that if this be, that is; if this has been, that has been; if this shall be, that shall be; which is to know conditionally; and that not the consequence of one thing to another, but of one name of a thing to another name of the same thing.