We may as well think the use of reason
necessary to make our eyes discover visible objects, as that there
should be need of reason, or the exercise thereof, to make the
understanding see what is originally engraven on it, and cannot be
in the understanding before it be perceived by it. So that to make
reason discover those truths thus imprinted, is to say, that the use
of reason discovers to a man what he knew before: and if men have
those innate impressed truths originally, and before the use of
reason, and yet are always ignorant of them till they come to the
use of reason, it is in effect to say, that men know and know them not
at the same time.
10. No use made of reasoning in the discovery of these two maxims.
It will here perhaps be said that mathematical demonstrations, and
other truths that are not innate, are not assented to as soon as
proposed, wherein they are distinguished from these maxims and other
innate truths. I shall have occasion to speak of assent upon the first
proposing, more particularly by and by. I shall here only, and that
very readily, allow, that these maxims and mathematical demonstrations
are in this different: that the one have need of reason, using of
proofs, to make them out and to gain our assent; but the other, as
soon as understood, are, without any the least reasoning, embraced and
assented to.
Pages:
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50