Afterwards, the mind
proceeding further, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of
general names. In this manner the mind comes to be furnished with
ideas and language, the materials about which to exercise its
discursive faculty. And the use of reason becomes daily more
visible, as these materials that give it employment increase. But
though the having of general ideas and the use of general words and
reason usually grow together, yet I see not how this any way proves
them innate. The knowledge of some truths, I confess, is very early in
the mind but in a way that shows them not to be innate. For, if we
will observe, we shall find it still to be about ideas, not innate,
but acquired; it being about those first which are imprinted by
external things, with which infants have earliest to do, which make
the most frequent impressions on their senses. In ideas thus got,
the mind discovers that some agree and others differ, probably as soon
as it has any use of memory; as soon as it is able to retain and
perceive distinct ideas. But whether it be then or no, this is
certain, it does so long before it has the use of words; or comes to
that which we commonly call "the use of reason." For a child knows
as certainly before it can speak the difference between the ideas of
sweet and bitter (i.e. that sweet is not bitter), as it knows
afterwards (when it comes to speak) that wormwood and sugarplums are
not the same thing.
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