For, if
they were innate, what need they be proposed in order to gaining
assent, when, by being in the understanding, by a natural and original
impression, (if there were any such,) they could not but be known
before? Or doth the proposing them print them clearer in the mind than
nature did? If so, then the consequence will be, that a man knows them
better after he has been thus taught them than he did before. Whence
it will follow that these principles may be made more evident to us by
others' teaching than nature has made them by impression: which will
ill agree with the opinion of innate principles, and give but little
authority to them; but, on the contrary, makes them unfit to be the
foundations of all our other knowledge; as they are pretended to be.
This cannot be denied, that men grow first acquainted with many of
these self-evident truths upon their being proposed: but it is clear
that whosoever does so, finds in himself that he then begins to know a
proposition, which he knew not before, and which from thenceforth he
never questions; not because it was innate, but because the
consideration of the nature of the things contained in those words
would not suffer him to think otherwise, how, or whensoever he is
brought to reflect on them. And if whatever is assented to at first
hearing and understanding the terms must pass for an innate principle,
every well-grounded observation, drawn from particulars into a general
rule, must be innate.
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