, innate, than which there
cannot be anything more opposite to reason and experience. Universal
and ready assent upon hearing and understanding the terms is, I grant,
a mark of self-evidence; but self-evidence, depending not on innate
impressions, but on something else, (as we shall show hereafter,)
belongs to several propositions which nobody was yet so extravagant as
to pretend to be innate.
19. Such less general propositions known before these universal
maxims. Nor let it be said, that those more particular self-evident
propositions, which are assented to at first hearing, as that "one and
two are equal to three," that "green is not red," &c., are received as
the consequences of those more universal propositions which are looked
on as innate principles; since any one, who will but take the pains to
observe what passes in the understanding, will certainly find that
these, and the like less general propositions, are certainly known,
and firmly assented to by those who are utterly ignorant of those more
general maxims; and so, being earlier in the mind than those (as
they are called) first principles, cannot owe to them the assent
wherewith they are received at first hearing.
20. "One and one equal to Two, &c., not general nor useful,"
answered. If it be said, that these propositions, viz.
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