23. The argument of assenting on first hearing, is upon a false
supposition of no precedent teaching. There is, I fear, this further
weakness in the foregoing argument, which would persuade us that
therefore those maxims are to be thought innate, which men admit at
first hearing; because they assent to propositions which they are
not taught, nor do receive from the force of any argument or
demonstration, but a bare explication or understanding of the terms.
Under which there seems to me to lie this fallacy, that men are
supposed not to be taught nor to learn anything de novo; when, in
truth, they are taught, and do learn something they were ignorant of
before. For, first, it is evident that they have learned the terms,
and their signification; neither of which was born with them. But this
is not all the acquired knowledge in the case: the ideas themselves,
about which the proposition is, are not born with them, no more than
their names, but got afterwards. So that in all propositions that
are assented to at first hearing, the terms of the proposition,
their standing for such ideas, and the ideas themselves that they
stand for, being neither of them innate, I would fain know what
there is remaining in such propositions that is innate. For I would
gladly have any one name that proposition whose terms or ideas were
either of them innate.
Pages:
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64