Since, if they are innate
truths, they must be innate thoughts: there being nothing a truth in
the mind that it has never thought on. Whereby it is evident, if there
by any innate truths, they must necessarily be the first of any
thought on; the first that appear.
27. Not innate, because they appear least where what is innate shows
itself clearest. That the general maxims we are discoursing of are not
known to children, idiots, and a great part of mankind, we have
already sufficiently proved: whereby it is evident they have not an
universal assent, nor are general impressions. But there is this
further argument in it against their being innate: that these
characters, if they were native and original impressions, should
appear fairest and clearest in those persons in whom yet we find no
footsteps of them; and it is, in my opinion, a strong presumption that
they are not innate, since they are least known to those in whom, if
they were innate, they must needs exert themselves with most force and
vigour. For children, idiots, savages, and illiterate people, being of
all others the least corrupted by custom, or borrowed opinions;
learning and education having not cast their native thoughts into
new moulds; nor by super-inducing foreign and studied doctrines,
confounded those fair characters nature had written there; one might
reasonably imagine that in their minds these innate notions should lie
open fairly to every one's view, as it is certain the thoughts of
children do.
Pages:
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69