reafoning faculties of the foul, which are almost conftantly, though not always warily nor wifely employed, would not know how to move, for want of a foundation and footing in moft men ; who through laziness or avocation do not, or for want of time, or true helps, or for other caufes, cannot penetrate into the principles of knowledge, and trace truth to its fountain and original; it is natural for them, and almost unavoidable, to take up with some borrowed principles: which being reputed and prefumed to be the evident proofs of other things, are thought not to need any other proof themselves. Whoever fhall receive any of thefe into his mind, and entertain them there, with the reverence ufually paid to principles, never venturing to examine them, but accuftoming himself to believe them, because they are to be believed, may take up from his education, and the fashions of his country, any abfurdity for innate principles; and by long poring on the fame objects, fo dim his fight, as to take monsters lodged in his own brain, for the images of the Deity, and the workmanfhip of his hands. $27. Principles must be examined. By this progrefs how many there are who arrive at principles, which they belive innate, may be easily obferved, in the variety of oppofite principles held and contended for by all forts and degrees of men. And he that fhall deny this to be the method, wherein moft men proceed to the affurance they have of the truth and evidence of their principle, will perhaps find it a harder matter any other way to account for the contrary tenets, which are firmly believed, confidently afferted, and which great numbers are ready at any time to feal with their blood. And, indeed, if it be the privilege of innate principles to be received upon their own authority, without examination, I know not what may not be believed, or how any one's principles can be queftioned. If they may, and ought to be examined and tried, I defire to know how first and innate principles can be tried; or, at leaft, it is reasonable to demand the marks and characters, whereby the genuine innate principles may be VOL. I. K diftinguished from others; that fo, amidst the great variety of pretenders, I may be kept from mistakes, in fo material a point as this. When this is done, I hall be ready to embrace fuch welcome and ufeful propofitions; and till then I may with modefty doubt, since I fear univerfal confent, which is the only one produced, will fcarce prove a fufficient mark to direct my choice, and affure me of any innate principles. From what has been faid, I think it past doubt, that there are no practical principles wherein all men agree; and therefore none innate. CHAP. IV. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING INNATE PRINCIPLES, BOTH SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL. 1. Principles not Innate, unless their Ideas be Innate. HAD thofe, who would perfuade us that there are innate principles, not taken them together in grofs, but confidered separately the parts out of which those propofitions are made; they would not, perhaps, have been fo forward to believe they were innate: fince, if the ideas which made up thofe truths were not, it was impoffible that the propofitions made up of them fhould be innate, or the knowledge of them be born with us. For if the ideas be not innate there was a time when the mind was without thofe principles; and then they will not be innate, but be derived from fome other original. For, where the ideas themselves are not, there can be no knowledge, no affent, no mental or verbal propofitions about them. § 2. Ideas, especially thofe belonging to Principles, notborn with Children. IF we will attentively confider new-born children, we fhall have little reason to think that they bring many ideas into the world with them. For bating perhaps fome faint ideas of hunger, and thirst, and warmth, and fome pains which they may have felt in the womb, there is not the leaft appearance of any fettled ideas at all in them; especially of ideas anfwering the terms, which make up thofe univerfal propofitions that are efteemed innate principles. One may perceive how, by degrees, afterwards, ideas come into their minds; and that they get no more, nor no other, than what experience, and the obfervation of things, that come in their way, furnish them with; which might be enough to fatisfy us, that they are not original characters, ftamped on the mind, $ 3. Iris impoffible for the fame thing to be, and not to be, is certainly (if there be any fuch) an innate principle. But can any one think, or will any one fay, that impoffibility and identity are two innate ideas? are they fuch as all mankind have, and bring into the world with them? And are they thofe that are the firft in children, and antecedent to all acquired ones? if they are innate, they muft needs be fo.. Hath a child an idea of in posfibility and identity, before it has of white or black, fweet or bitter? And is it from the knowledge of this principle, that it concludes, that wormwood rubbed on the nipple hath not the fame taste that it ufed to receive from thence? Is it the actual knowledge of imposfibile eft idem effe, et non effe, that makes a child diftinguifh between its mother and a ftranger; or, that makes it fond of the one, and fly the other? Or does the mind regulate itfelf and its affent by ideas, that it never yet had? Or the understanding draw conclufions from principles, which it never yet knew or understood? The names impossibility and identity ftand for two ideas, fo far from being innate or born with us, that I think it requires great care and attention to form them right in our understandings. They are fo far from being brought into the world with us, fo remote from the thoughts of infancy and childhood; that, I believe, upon examination, it will be found that many grown men want them. § 4. Identity, an Idea not Innate. Ir identity (to inftance in that alone) be a native impreffion, and confequently fo clear and obvious to us, that we must needs know it even from our cradles ; I would gladly be refolved by one of seven, or feventy years old, whether a man, being a creature, confifting of foul and body, being the fame man when his body is changed? Whether Euphorbus and Pythagoras, having had the fame foul, were the fame man, though they lived feveral ages afunder? Nay, whether the cock too, which had the fame foul, were not the fame with both of them? Whereby, perhaps, it will appear, that our idea of fameness is not fo fettled and clear, as to deferve to be thought innate in us. For if thofe innate ideas are not clear and diftinét, fo as to be univerfally known, and naturally agreed on, they cannot be fubjects of univerfal and undoubted truths; but will be the unavoidable occafion of perpetual uncertainty. For I fuppofe, every one's idea of identity will not be the fame that Pythagoras, and thousands others of his followers have and which then fhall be true? Which innate ? Or are there two different ideas of identity, both innate ? : § 5. NOR let any one think, that the questions I have here propofed about the identity of man, are bare empty fpeculations; which, if they were would be enough to fhow, that there was in the understandings of men, no innate idea of identity. He that fhall, with a little attention, reflect on the refurrection, and confider that divine justice will bring to judgment, at the last day, the very fame perfons, to be happy or miferable in the other, who did well or ill in this life; will find it perhaps not eafy to refolve with himself, what makes the fame man, or wherein identity confifts; and will not be forward to think he, and every one, even children themselves, have naturally a clear idea of it. § 6. Whale and Part not Innate Ideas. LET us examine that principle of mathematics, viz. that The whole is bigger than a part. This, I take it, is reckoned amongst innate principles. I am fure it has as good 2 title as any to be thought fo; which yet nobody can think it to be, when he confiders the ideas it comprehends in it, whole and part, are perfectly relative: but the pofitive ideas, to which they properly and immediately belong, are extenfion and number, of which alone whole and part are relations. So that if whole and part are innate ideas, extenfion and number must be fo too: it being impoffible to have an idea of a relation, without having any at all of the thing to which it belongs, and in which it is founded. Now, whether the minds of men have naturally imprinted on them the ideas of extenfion and number, I leave to be confidered by those who are the patrons of innate principles. 7. Idea of Worship not Innate.. THAT God is to be worshipped, is, without doubt, as great a truth as any that can enter into the mind of man, and deferves the first place amongst all practical principles but yet it can by no means be thought innate, unlefs the ideas of God and worship are innate. That the idea the term worship ftands for, is not in the underftanding of children, and a character ftamped on the mind in its firft original, I think, will be easily granted, by any one that confiders how few there be, amongft: grown men, who have a clear and diftinét notion of it.. And I fuppofe there cannot be any thing more ridiculous, than to fay that children have this practical principle innate, that God is to be worshipped; and yet, that they know not what that worship of God is, which is their duty. But to pafs by this: ་་་ $8. Idea of God not Innate. If any idea can be imagined innate, the idea of God may, of all others, for many reafons, be thought fo; fince it is hard to conceive, how there fhould be innate moral principles, without an innate idea of a Deity: without a notion of a lawmaker, it is impoffible to have a notion of a law, and an obligation to obferve it. Befides the a-theifts, taken notice of amongst the ancients, and left branded upon the records of hiftory, hath not navigation difcovered, in thefe latter ages whole nations, at the bay of Soldania,* in Brafil,t in Boranday, and in the Caribbee Iflands, &c. amongst whom there was to be found no notion of a God, no religion? Ni-cholaus del Techo, in literis ex Paraquaria de Caaiguarum converfione, has thefe words: § Reperi eam gentem nullum nomen habere quod Deum et hominis animam fignificet, nulla facra habet, nulla idola. These are inftances of * Rhoe apud Thevenot, p. 2. Jo. de Lery, c. 16. Martiniere, 201-322. Terry, 17-545 23-545. vington, 489-606. Relatio triplex de rebus. Indicis» Gaaiguarum 43-79 K24 |